


All’s Fair in Love and War

by Oceans_Away



Category: Lore Olympus (Webcomic)
Genre: Alcohol, BDSM, Big sister Athena, Chaos ship, Cuddling, Disneys Hercules references, Eventual Smut, F/M, Falling In Love, Fame, Feud, Flirting, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Fun, Gen, Getting Together, Gossip, Gross historical inaccuracies, High society dramas, I love these two with my whole heart, Idiots in Love, Interpersonal Drama, Joy Ride, Kink, Making Out, MeetCute, Opening Up, Pining, Prequel, Rivalry, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Shade, Sibling Love, Slow Burn, Smut, Soulmates, Swearing, Sweet, Using old pop songs and flip phone references to exploit your nostalgia into liking this fic, Vulnerability, antics, celebrity, corny flirting, dumbassery, family tensions, fuck the patriarchy, mall date, romcom, soft, too many parties
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:08:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 60,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27831280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceans_Away/pseuds/Oceans_Away
Summary: After spending her life in the sea with Poseidon and Amphitrite, Aphrodite feels ready to take on Olympus, and she's already making a stir. Ares, the young prince, has just been appointed the God of War and arrived home from his first campaign, with all his family waiting to see if he'll live up to expectations. When the two meet by chance in Hera's garden, it sparks a friendship and a love that will change them and Olympus for ages to come.Hey, hopeless romantics! Settle in for the ride if you:Sometimes wake up in the middle of the night pining for "When Harry Met Sally" and "Ten Things I Hate About You", but wish they had more shoe-horned bisexuality and myth references.Think smut is great, but it would be cool if it was scripted by Lorelai Gilmore.Wish Hermes gate-crashed more rom-coms.Wanna see some love gods and TGOEM throw down.Have a thing for characters with *ambient chaos*.Buckle up, Buttercups! Actually, don't bother, it's a slow burn. Better grab some snacks.[I'll update the tags each chapter, and put any CWs in summaries.]Building up the soundtrack by chapterhere!
Relationships: Aphrodite/Ares (Lore Olympus)
Comments: 40
Kudos: 68





	1. “I’m a very old goddess.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Journalist, Acteon, interviews the new goddess lately arrived on Olympus. He wasn't really prepared for her.
> 
> Song for Part One: ["3,200 Years Ago", James Horner, Troy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YT3jTtLbb0&list=PL43097F0167844222)
> 
> Song for Part Two: ["Fame", David Bowie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-_30HA7rec)

Darkness. Darkness and the pressure of water. It weighs down her body, pinning her to the soft seabed, compressing her lungs, clogging her nose, making her eyes ache. Fish flash silver across her vision. Kelp curls around her ankles. Webs of coral sprout in a gnarled cage. A white-gold glimmer seeps through the deep green of the chasm of water, but is extinguished in a cloud of squid ink. 

She knows one thing in her barely formed consciousness. She will not die here. She doesn’t yet know what it means to be alive. She just knows she wants it, and that it is more than this.

She opens her mouth and takes a defiant breath.

Water floods her body. It bloats her lungs, courses in her veins, swirls in her skull, booming in her ears. It makes her light. It makes her float. It makes her strong. She gulps again. She gives herself to the sea. She claims its weight, its darkness, its power. She kicks and the kelp whips away. She shoots her fists out above her and the tendrils of coral shatter in a burst of pink dust. She writhes and swims in the heavy surge pushing her down. 

She fights.

She rises.

Her legs stop flailing and begin to purposefully propel her upwards. With her reaching arms, she grabs great handfuls of swishing water and wrenches herself higher. 

The white-gold glimmer winks through the emerald vastness. It brightens and swells, as she climbs through the dense, pressing water.

She fights.

She rises.

The water thins. It washes turquoise. She can see her own hands, her own arms, the wild stream of her hair around her.

She gulps again, taking the sea into herself, consuming it, consuming all in her path.

The light becomes a glittering, fractured orb, blazing through the rippling waves and showering her with something new, something wonderful. Warmth. 

Warmth.

Light.

Life.

Love.

It’s all up there. She has a purpose. She has a power. She has an existence. Waiting for her. Wanting her. 

She kicks. She climbs. She thrashes. She hauls herself higher, pulsing undulations going down her body, as she throws herself into the ascent, her muscles rolling, her eyes reflecting that stunning, summoning light. 

She fights.

She rises.

The surface of the sea blows apart. Crystal drops and crashing waves erupt across the piercing blue.

In the singing, spiralling dance where sunlight meets the ocean, she is born.

She, the originating act of wrath incarnate.

The last echo of the titans.

Glorious.

Primal.

Dazzling.

Dawn breaks over the world, and welcomes the first of the gods.

*

Acteon cleared his throat and clicked his pen nervously. He was sweating through his polyester shirt, his hair slick from the number of times he’d run his hand through it. The goddess sat in a relaxed half-lounge in the compact armchair opposite him, one long leg crossed over the other, tapering fluidly into a keen, pointed stiletto. She watched him with glittering, lavender eyes, peeking from a voluminous sweep of lavender hair.

He swallowed. “Shall we begin?”

“Of course,” she replied graciously, giving him a coldly reassuring grin.

“Do you mind if I record?” he asked.

She shook her head and gave him an inviting gesture. “I like to have my full meaning understood.”

“Right.” He clicked his pen again. “The magazine is real excited we get to talk to you. We’re so grateful.”

The goddess inclined her head with a noble air. He fumbled taking the dictaphone out of his pocket. He cursed under his breath. He checked the tape was in and put it on the coffee table between them, next to the big jug of water with lime and cucumber wedges floating in it. He fluttered the tremor out of his fingers and pressed the large, square, red button.

There was a soft click and whir.

“There,” he said shyly. The woman’s eyes were like UV lamps, he couldn’t settle himself. “So,” he cleared his throat, starting as she perked up to listen. “You're a pretty new goddess?”

Lilac lips bloomed in amusement. “Actually, I’m a very old goddess. But I am new to Olympus.”

Acteon nodded, rubbing the two-day stubble on his neck. “How are you finding Olympus?”

The goddess flicked her hair off her face. “Oh, it’s a lovely city. And, speedy as Hermes is, it can be a drag waiting for deliveries in the ocean, so I’m a big fan of the faster service. I like my neighbourhood too, quiet, but not too far from where the action is.” She gave him a glittering glance.

Acteon closed his fingers tighter on his pen. “What sort of action?”

She chuckled. “You’re a gossip columnist, you know exactly what sort of action.”

Acteon shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I’m a lifestyle journalist.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, Olympians certainly have an active lifestyle.”

“Are you fitting in?” He said it too bluntly, he saw it on her face.

“Who wants to fit in?”

Acteon let out an awkward laugh, his larynx bouncing off his tightly knotted tie. “OK, are you being welcomed?”

The goddess interlaced her fingers in her lap, sliding her elbow onto the puffed arm of the chair. “Yes. People forget, what with my top secret skincare routine, but the Six Traitors and I go way back.”

Acteon’s interest stirred. “But, you didn’t fight in the Titanomachy, did you?”

The goddess’ jaw seemed to stiffen momentarily. She covered it seamlessly with a warm smile, her deep voice sweetening. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

Acteon’s back prickled. She was being so genteel, but somehow this felt like combat. There was something about the penetrating pressure of her gaze. He wasn’t sure who was really in the hot seat here. 

She’d chosen to take today’s string of interviews in a hotel. The room was stuffy, and heady with the flourishing bouquets of roses and orchids offered to her by those who had trooped through before him. He’d been off his game from the moment he’d realised the "real" papers were here. They were always skulking around the scoops the little guys like him dug up. He’d been onto the arrival of this new Olympian way before them and their floristry. Well, maybe they were better at schmoozing, but they didn’t ask the real questions. That was his province.

He straightened up in his chair. “Queen Hera is the goddess of marriage, she still fought.”

Her knuckles hardened. “You don’t think marriage is the province of fighters? Pity, you didn’t strike me as a cynic.”

His tongue dashed over his dry lips. “I…”

“Hera shows her nature as a warrior in her role now, as then. I mean that in a good way. Marriage is difficult, it takes a tough character.”

“And love isn’t difficult?” He made himself meet her eyes.

She tilted her head and regarded him unreadably. She spoke in a stern lilt. “Love is easy. People are difficult.”

“Is that why you weren’t the seventh Traitor?” Acteon felt like a hound snapping its jaws at the tail of an elusive vixen, closing in. “Some difficulty?”

She leaned back in her chair, her heeled foot bouncing. “Does your rag do a lot of history? A favourite among humanities students, is it?”

The dictaphone whirred.

“No.” He clicked his pen again. “It’s just, the realms have a new figure in the pantheon, and I think worshippers will be curious about where she’s been all this time.”

The goddess’ sleek eyebrow arched dangerously. “Perhaps it’s best to trust me to know what my worshippers need.” 

She looked coolly into his eyes for a long moment, drawing a fresh wave of clammy sweat from his pores. She waited until he was forced to look away, blinking the intense, amethyst glare out of his aching retinas. Her face thawed, quickly as it had iced, all pretty, summer flowers and playful peeks from the curtain of hair sneaking over her cheek again. 

“Alright, if you want a little more, then just between us. And your charming readers, of course.” 

Acteon’s stomach flipped. He leaned forward into her enchanting, haunting smile.

Her voice turned a strange combination of brusque and wistful, allowing him some emotion for his story, but keeping herself shielded from the depth of it. “I was born when the titan Kronos severed his father, Ouranos’, balls and threw them into the sea.”

Acteon crossed his legs uncomfortably and took a sip of water from his glass.

“Seafoam and semen formed me as you see me now, fully adult. Olympians tend to have rather bizarre birth stories, I’m no special case there. But imagine how it is to be without childhood. The way you’re looking at me now, you’re attracted to me, you’ve imagined me naked several times, and once sucking your cock.”

Acteon choked on his water. He spluttered desperately. His fingers slipped on the condensation on the glass and it fell to the carpet with a dull clink, spilling water and cucumber slices on the beige. He snatched at a clump of half-used tissues in his pocket and bent down frantically to clean up the mess, his heart hammering and his ears and face burning.

“It’s alright.” The goddess shrugged, ignoring his scrambling about around his shoes. “Everyone does it to everyone, it’s only natural.”

He slammed the glass back onto the coffee table and sat bolt upright, cramming his notebook back into his hand and beginning to write nothing actually useful to avoid her eye. What did she say that for? Fates below.

“What I’m saying is,” the goddess went on with a hint of a drawl, “That’s fine and dandy for an old lady like me, but no baby girl should have the social burdens of an adult body. Well, really no adult should either, but that’s a conversation for a different time. I don’t just mean the sexual side, we assume all sorts of adults’ capabilities and feelings that we’d never ascribe to a child.” her eyes wandered away for a moment, then shot back. “So, anyway, I grew up essentially alone, in this strange, full form that meant that no creature on earth really knew how to react to me. And by the time the Titanomachy came, I was hardly the sort to simply wander into alliances. And what’s more, regardless of years, I was still in so many ways a child. Or at least, I needed some time to be one.” She paused, exhaling softly with a subtle puff of her cheeks. She reached out to the prim orchid plant by her chair and touched the petals. “People say I haven’t been around because I haven’t been on Olympus, but they must recall we have three kings. As a Cypriote, and given the manner of my birth, I was always far more a part of the sea than the mountain. When peace came, Poseidon and Amphitrite took me in.”

She paused again, her fingers playing idly around pink petals. Acteon’s eyes flitted between her hand and the dictaphone, thunking in the silence.

“That was kind of them,” he said at last, prompting her.

“Wasn’t it?” She shot him a smile, stunning the taut moment of conflict out of his brain. She wriggled her shoulders and sank relaxed into her chair again. “And that’s where I’ve been. Perhaps not making a great name for myself on Olympus, but I have been in a royal court and I have been working as a goddess.” She lowered her voice, as if telling a secret. “I didn’t come here to get started. I came here to do the next thing.”

Her voice pulled him towards her on an invisible string. He drifted forward in his seat without realising and lowered his voice too. “What’s the next thing?”

She dropped her volume again, to a whisper, her large eyes sparkling. “Oh, wouldn’t you like to know.” 

Acteon wheezed a laugh, his shoulders dropping. “Yes, damn it. But we can’t always get what we want, I guess.”

The top of her nose creased in a playful expression. “I can.”

He faltered, his laughter fading. He clicked his pen. “I bet you can.” He sniffed and rubbed his temple, leaving an ink stain on it. “Are you a powerful goddess?”

“Ask my worshippers.”

“Are there a lot of them?”

“They’re increasing.”

“How are you doing that?”

“I cover a lot of popular topics, I suppose. And I try to listen to them.”

“You certainly have the credentials.” He leafed through his notebook to find the list he’d made earlier. “Lady of Cyprus, Risen from the Sea, Richly Crowned, Laughter-Loving, Fair Voyage, Bringer of Victory, Postponer of Old Age, Bountiful, Shapely Formed, Ally in Love, Deceptive One, Whispering, Contriver, Heavenly, and Common to All People. That’s quite the set of epithets, and it’s not even the full list. One wonders what to call you.”

“Oh, that’s all trappings really.” The goddess with a hundred names waved them all away in a modest, easy gesture. She plucked her glass from the table and tipped it to him with a blinding, saccharine smile. “For you, my dear, and for all my newfound friends on Olympus, I need only go by one name.” 

Acteon raised his eyebrows.

“Just call me Aphrodite.”


	2. “I didn’t think the gods could have visions.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ares meets a stranger, and she instantly has an effect. Things heat up quick, even for him.
> 
> Song: ["Hello, I Love You", The Doors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f1z-nHvt3c)

Ares was lying in the grass and thinking about nothing in particular, which was his favourite topic. Fluffy, lamb-like clouds brisked across the blue topaz sky over Olympus. A radiant, custard-cream sun showered warmth down on the city, dappling his copper-gold face, brightness kissing brightness. He relaxed into the serenity of his parents' gardens, the back of his head rested on his forearm, his free hand picking at the buttons on his flannel shirt. The vast grounds of the house gave him plenty of hideaways, where he could, ironically, find some peace. He'd been making dens and fortresses among these roses and hollyhocks and hydrangeas since he was a kid. Returning from his first campaign in his new position as God of War, he was glad he remembered the most secluded spots. The huge, royal house was somehow too small, every space cluttered with the mess of his parents' marriage and the feeling he was definitely too old to be under their roof. The outdoors let him breathe, let him stretch, let him be as big and blazing as he was. Well, ish.

He gazed drowsily into the fountain of light pouring from the sky, blinking slowly, as his vision blurred. Sleep inched into the back of his mind. 

The blur darkened. 

Ares scrunched up his face and peered. 

The blur turned a pretty shade of lavender, shaping to an hourglass vase bursting with purple blooms. 

He rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. His vision cleared. 

His heart stopped. 

Standing over him was the most stunningly beautiful woman he'd ever seen. Her face was heart-shaped, with round, glimmering cheeks and a pert, pointed chin. Her lips looked blown from glass, glossy and full and firm, in a round, pronounced pout. Her eyes were dazzling amethyst, brighter than the sun, but also darker, like underground stars, and with large, liquid pupils. Her hair fell in a waterfall sweep, ending in fat, plumed curls, all tumbling towards him, as if she was falling through evening cloud. She was bent double over him, inspecting him with her wide, piercing eyes. Her hands were on her closed knees, a powder blue mini skirt squeezing thick thighs together. A powder blue suit jacket lined to her full figure. 

The woman cocked her head curiously, looking like a bird of paradise. 

Ares tingled on the back of his neck. He grinned like a doped shark. "I didn’t think the gods could have visions."

The woman raised a finely shaped eyebrow. "Oh?" 

Ares gazed up at her, his voice coming in a dreamy, syrupy husk. "I thought we only gave visions out. But it seems I’m blessed as well." 

The woman smiled. It was radiant, enthralling. She pressed her lips together, glanced away, then batted her eyes warningly at him. "I’m here to see Hera." 

Ares had forgotten, but his mother was interviewing for a new assistant at 3 o'clock today. It wasn't even 2.30 yet, the mortal realm had taught him how to tell by the sun. He casually scratched his abs, letting the motion tug the hem of his shirt up to show a sliver of skin. "You’re really early. Hera’s a busy woman, she won’t be pleased to have her schedule disrupted." A broad, goading grin spread like butter across his face. "You’d better stay here a little while. For your own safety." 

The woman's exquisite mouth twisted in contained amusement. She looked at him with a little smoke in her eyes. "You’ll protect me, will you?" 

Ares’ skin heated. He bounced his eyebrow. "On my honour." 

The woman cupped her delicate chin in the V of her thumb and index finger and made a pantomime of thinking. She grinned like a pixie and dropped to his side, swishing her long legs under her and leaning on one straight arm. That gorgeous gush of hair flowed like wine over one round shoulder. She fixed him with a look of challenge, of  _ you'd better not waste my time.  _

Ares' heart kicked. He really hadn't expected that to work. He sat hurriedly, leaning back on his palms, broad chest open, stocky legs splayed, his muddy combat boots feeling very visible next to her pastel pristineness. 

He bit his lip to wake himself up and said the first thing his bewildered brain could muster. "So, where you from?" 

The woman snorted at him, her cute nose wrinkling. She fluttered a graceful, manicured hand at his face, buffeting him with a sweet, dusky perfume. "No small talk," she insisted. "I'm about to have that for an hour." 

Ares faltered. Her voice was surprisingly deep, and somehow spiced. She sounded like if chilli chocolate could talk. It was a moreish voice. He fixed his face to look relaxed, but scrabbled about urgently in his mind for something to say that might make her speak more. The back of his neck overheated under her expectant, imperious gaze. "OK…" He searched and juggled options, and then he paused. He looked at her and opened his senses. Underneath her cool veneer, there was an undercurrent of anger. It was mellow, but he could feel it - deadly. It rumbled at her core, like molten iron in Tartarus. This woman was a fighter. This woman was something formidable. Wrath. Ares’ breath stopped. He moved his tongue in his mouth. Everyone’s anger tasted different. Hers tasted of cinnamon. He sucked on it. He saw her cheeks darken. Could she feel him? He bit his lip to stop himself pursuing it, with the pain of a boy looking away from a cake shop window. He levelled his tiger-lily gaze on her and spoke in a soft surge of sincerity. "What's the thing that makes you angriest, like more than anything?" 

The woman's hypnotic eyes fluttered in guarded surprise. A tense quiet stretched in the small space between them. Sparrows chirped and bees hummed. Further off, the grand fountain in the centre of the gardens trickled with the sound of a xylophone. 

The woman tutted, stuck her nose in the air, and looked past the ridge of Ares' cheekbone. "It's those beards that don't have a moustache, getting fashionable down there."

Ares boomed a laughed, the tension breaking and fizzing in the small of his back. "Not one for a straight answer, huh?" 

The woman widened her eyes innocently and put her hand to her heart, weighted with chunky silver rings. "I'm serious! It's like, are you doing facial hair or aren't you? Commit already."

Ares huffed the last of his laughter out and looked at her warmly. Her eyes met his, sly and… was that curiosity?

She tossed her hair and ran her fingers through it, drawing it off her long neck and pulling his gaze. “Why? What makes you angry?” she asked, with a note of confrontation. “Something very important and profound?”

Ares shrugged like a bear, looking straight ahead. “Yeah, for sure. Injustice, cruelty, abuse of power, all that shit.” He rolled his eyes back to her and lowered his voice seriously. “Also, the other day, my buddy tried to tell me that lime isn't that important to guacamole, and I swear I felt new veins pop in my neck.”

The woman looked horrified. “But the lime is integral to balancing the avocado!”

Ares cast his hands up. “Thank you!” They caught each other’s eye with a twinkle. He coughed out a small chuckle and shrugged again. “But mainly it's the injustice thing.”

She smiled, then glanced down and flicked a blade of grass that had strayed onto her taut skirt. The garden was newly mowed, the fresh, green scent permeating the air. Her floral colouring stood out in the emerald, as if she was growing lush from the ground. A blackbird hopped near her ankle, whistling tunefully. Ares stared at her.

“Why that question?” she asked.

Ares started. He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. “You asked for big talk.”

She cocked a severe eyebrow at him, making his gut twang. “There's a spectrum, though,” she said pointedly, “between the weather and my innermost feelings and values.” She raised her chin and gave him a regal, diminishing look. “My deepest anger isn't your business, Stranger.”

Ares couldn’t help but smirk. “You'd be surprised.”

She regarded him like an especially puzzling mathematical problem. “Alright, then.” She tilted towards him. There was no defending against the look she fixed him with, it went through him like gamma rays. She wet her lip, the sunlight stroking it. “What's your biggest turn on?”

Ares’ pulse thumped. He flushed cloyingly hot, his mouth going dry. Every embarrassing thing he’d ever cleared out of his search history immediately barrelled into his mind. He tugged at his collar. “My biggest turn on?”

She grinned like a jackal. “You asked your incredibly personal question. That's mine.”

“You didn't answer mine.”

“Well, your choice whether you answer me, I suppose.”

Ares chewed on his tongue. This woman had apparently already figured out that he could be dared into just about anything. She seemed like the type of person who could be really dangerous with that knowledge. He searched her face, the tempting candy assortment of intrigue and challenge and play. He felt like a ball of wool being unravelled by a kitten. He mentally shuffled through a few dumb, comedy answers, a few banal deflections. A soft breeze whisked between them and stirred her hair at her cheek. 

He didn’t want to shrug her off with something forgettable. Something about her deserved the truth.

He twisted his body to sit cross-legged facing her. He leaned his elbows on his knees, stooped to her height, and looked deep into her dancing eyes. “Someone standing up for something.”

Her face softened, her eyes lightening. A delicate crease appeared in her brow.

It drew more words from deep in his chest. “You know that moment when someone shows their anger, but they're using it for a purpose? Like, it’s righteous. It's making them mighty.” He bit his lip and looked down at his hands, his face prickling. “That.”

She kept regarding him like an abstract painting in an art gallery.

He looked up with a throw-away grin. “Like, I have to be attracted to the person first. I’m not a saint.”

She laughed brightly, startling the blackbird. “I assumed.”

“Yeah.”

She tucked her hair behind her and narrowed her eyes at him, like she was peering through a magnifying glass. “You have a real thing about anger, don't you?”

Ares grimaced and scratched behind his ear. He allowed himself another subtle lap of cinnamon from her aura. “So they tell me.”

She caught his eye again, she kept not letting him shrink into evasiveness. He rocked back to lean on his palms and let his grin out, like a racing hound when the pen opens. “So,” he cocked an eyebrow, making a small show of looking her up and down. “Back at ya.”

She cast her chin up with a vibrant, indignant smile, wagging one bejewelled finger at him. “Oh no, you're not getting mine!”

Ares laughed. “Why not?”

She scrunched her nose at him. “It'll make things too easy for you.”

“What things?”

“You know exactly what things.”

Ares’ abdomen bubbled. He dropped his head and looked at her naively under his curls. “You'd be amazed how much I don't know at any given time.”

She snorted. “I don’t think I would.”

Ares clucked his tongue at that, then licked his teeth. He gave her a cocky grin, husking his voice. “Unless, Zeus forbid, you think I'm coming onto you.”

The woman wet her lip again. “Should I think that?”

He rocked forward, drawing up one knee, resting his elbow on it and leaning his cheek on his hand, closer into the mystique of her gaze. “You can think what you want.”

“Or you could tell me,” she replied flatly.

He kept up the cocky grin. “Are  _ you _ coming onto  _ me _ ?”

Her deriding bolt of laughter rang on the lemon trees. “Of course not.”

“I dispute that.”

“Oh, for Fates' sake.” She huffed in exasperation. 

She tugged at the hem of her skirt and scooted across the grass to his side. Her perfume curled into his senses, something between incense and Turkish delight. The sunlight moved over her body, as she slid towards him, a silk sheet being pulled away on a large, emerald bed. Ares warmed between his thighs. She reached into the narrow sliver of grass between them and snipped the thin stem of a violet with her keen thumbnail. She held the pretty, purple flower up under his chin. 

The tease of her fingers so close to the supple skin of his throat tickled all over his body. “What are you doing?” he asked warily.

The woman wasn’t looking into his face, she was examining the reflection of the flower on his bright skin. “You know how people hold buttercups under their chin to see if they like butter?” she said a little distantly. “I’m holding a violet under your chin to see if you like me.”

Ares swallowed, feeling the smouldering, red flush around his eyes spread to his cheeks. “You could just ask.”

She shrugged. “I did, you were evasive.”

“So were you.”

“And again.”

Ares faltered. He puffed out a chuckle and shook his head, looking at her softly. “OK, I'll stop. You can ask.”

“I can't.”

He frowned. “How come?” This dance around the increasingly obvious truth of his fascination was maddening. 

She finally raised her purple nebula eyes to his again. “You might lie.”

The corner of Ares’ mouth flicked up. “I never lie.”

She pursed her lips at him.

“Except just now.”

Her laugh was thrilling, it whisked around his body like a flock of starlings. 

He cleared his throat and forced his voice light. “So, what is the violet saying?”

Her smile bloomed across her face, the height of summer sapped from the garden and glowing in her round cheeks. “It says, ‘kiss him, and then he will for sure’.”

Ares’ voice came in a rough splutter. “Smart flower.”

“You think so?” She leaned closer to him, twizzling the flower between her fingers. Her hair swept forward and shaded her face in a soft brush of lavender. 

He swallowed. “It certainly has some good ideas.”

It was impossible to tell who moved first. Their faces dipped into the centre of the inch between them and their lips met in a slow, soft kiss. The violet fell from her fingertips. Ares’ blood rushed. The woman’s lips were gentle, but insistent. She steered his kiss, sliding closer to him in the grass, so her hair tickled his shoulder. She sucked his lower lip, making the back of his neck flare like it had been touched by a fire iron. He husked in his chest and fell deeper into the kiss, cupping her face and stroking his thumb over her cheek. She was warm too. His eyes fluttered open and eyed the smudge of violet blush across her chest. His heart began to pound. He went dizzy. Why was she affecting him like this? Sure, she was beautiful. But, he’d just spent a whole bunch of weeks hanging out with a king with eleven daughters, he could handle beauty. 

The woman pulled a fraction from him and sighed against the corner of his mouth. He melted, his skin rippling and an ache blossoming between his thighs. He fitted his finger and thumb around her jaw and pulled her in harder, his other hand stroking up her arm and closing tight around her bicep, surprisingly strong. She gripped his shirt front and yanked him to her body, popping two of the buttons. Ares’ pulse zinged. Her force was incredible. His strength didn’t seem to matter, she moved him like he was made of newspaper. 

She sneaked her tongue into his mouth, hooked his tongue, and tangled them together, pulling Ares’ breath from him. His brow buckled and he let out a thin moan, dissolving like whipped cream against her. The kiss ebbed and flowed between them. They seemed to find a natural rhythm, pushing and surrendering in smooth, effortless cycles, their quickened breaths coming in stereo. Ares floated away on the tidal motion of her kiss. His mind and his body all emptied of everything except the sun on his back and the heat of her body pressing to his, her soft breasts and belly padding to his hard muscle, pleasure sinking through him. She tasted of sweet coffee.

She broke their kiss to gasp for air, clinging to his collar. She snatched at his mouth and he reeled again. 

Who was this woman? All the while they’d been speaking, she’d had this mesmerising guardedness. One kiss, and she was unleashed. He felt like he’d poured oil on a fire. He wanted to feed it more. 

He snarled in his throat and lunged forward, knocking her onto her back in the grass and pouncing over her, caging her in his limbs. He’d intended to smile at her, tease her, play with her. Her eyes went round and diamond dazzling, her hair swirled in the grass like paint in water, her jacket fell open and her breasts rose round through a tight, white top. Her thighs tipped apart, the short hem of her skirt riding up, showing a glimpse of daisy white panties. Ares stared. His mouth hung open and his brain emptied. Quivers rolled down his spine and blood roared in his ears, drowning out the birdsong and the trickle of the fountain. He forgot where he was. He forgot who he was. The heat radiating from this woman was more than desire, more than impulse. It was ambition. It was intention. 

Her pretty, startled look faded into a sultry challenge. “Why did you do that?”

“Don't ask me why,” Ares breathed. “Ask me how I waited this long.” And he dived to her neck. 

Her skin was even sweeter than her kiss, and tinged with salt from the sweat of the summer day. He pressed his mouth over her jugular and danced his tongue hungrily on her. She gasped in his ear, spiking his lust, her body thrusting up to him and her hands sliding under his shirt and running over his abs. He shivered at her touch, warm and confident and clever, finding him out, taking possession of him. He released a groan from his chest and sucked harder on her throat. He wanted to bruise her, to give her something to remember him. 

Her hair spilled around her in the grass, as she snaked wickedly under him. She slowly drew her thighs around his hips, powerful, gleaming in the light, holding him secure. His cock pulsed almost painfully. He collapsed onto her and pressed his swell to that tantalising glimpse of lace under her skirt. A strike of pleasure coursed through him.

She moaned and giggled into his ear, curling her fingernails on his abs. The purr in her voice flooded him with want. “Mmm, Stranger, you're awfully forward.”

Ares jarred. His tongue halted on the hollow of her jaw. He whispered against her skin with a tremulous breath. “That OK?”

Her laugh was lower this time, villainous and vibrating. “That's ideal.”

And Ares was on his back. 

He choked on his yelp, as he was flung in a whirl of sunlight. He landed hard in the dry earth. The woman prowled over him, teeth glinting, hair cascading like champagne bursting from the bottle. He blinked in shock up at her, then caught his breath and beamed so wide it fractured his chiseled features. 

“You’re forward too,” he panted.

She sneaked her tongue out from between her teeth and giggled devilishly. “You betcha.”

She thrust onto him, sending his senses into a gale of gleeful confusion. She scooped her hands into the roots of his hair, his curls jostling around her grip, and pinned him to the ground with a heart-stopping kiss. Ares’ body turned volcanically hot. He craned up to meet her lips and began to run his hands on every inch of her he could reach. He hugged her waist, stroked her thighs, cupped her breasts, squeezed her ass, grasped her arms, and traced his fingers around her throat. Every shape of her fit his touch perfectly, it was like his body had been formed just for this moment. 

She ground on him, burning in his flesh. He could feel his thickening cock pressing against his zipper. She bit his lip. He wrenched her close.

“Gods, who are you?” he murmured desperately.

“Kiss my neck again,” she replied.

He moved faster than a falcon. He rocked his hips beneath her, tipping her into his mouth, and sucked ardently on her throat, humming in deep, kindling satisfaction at the golden ichor-tinged blooms of indigo under his lips. She moaned and shuddered and clawed at his shirt. She pulled him by his collar again. He stayed cemented to the delicious curve of her neck, as he was heaved up to sit beneath her. He wrapped her in his heavy arms. She clamped him in her thighs. Her hands raced around his shoulder blades. Her head dropped back to stretch her throat for him, sunlight dripping onto her blissed face, like honey.

“Oh my… Wow, you feel good. You feel so good…” Her fevered whisper kicked sparks up in his abdomen.

He moaned helplessly around the writhing of his tongue. He crushed her strong, soft body to him. They flowed together, a warm wind blowing in the meeting of hot and cool pressure. Ares’ flesh began to feel like liquid, began to blend into the sugary, garden air and the pooling sunlight and this woman’s irresistible skin, sticky with heat. That cinnamon sprinkle of anger he’d tasted on her aura was washed into the sweet, dark flavour of wild, aggressive want. He pulled from her neck and lost himself in kissing her mouth again, lost himself in her duelling tongue, and the massaging press of her lips, and the rapid rhythm of her shallow breathing, and the…

“Shit, I’m late!” The woman jerked in his arms and snapped her mouth from his. She was looking at her wrist watch with alarmed eyes.

“W-what?” Ares jabbered.

“Gotta go!” She leaped out of his lap and stood sharply. Her lilac lip gloss was smudged and there was a grass stain streaking down her skirt. Her spiked heels sank into the ground and she tottered, combing her hair neat with her fingers.

“I…” Ares was sprawled bewildered in the grass, hair tousled, shirt rumpled, jeans tented, his body pretty much going into shock. “I’m sure Hera can wait.”

“Sorry, Stranger.” The woman tugged her lapels straight and dusted off her sleeves. “Better safe than sorry.” She flashed him a bright, easy smile that hit him like a freight train. “This was fun, though, thanks!” She spun around, blowing a dainty kiss.

“Thanks?” Ares called incredulously after her.

She waved over her shoulder.

“Hey!” His voice screeched. He forced it low. “Hey... I’d at least like an answer to one of those questions you avoided.”

“I'm sorry to disappoint you,” she chuckled over her shoulder, hips swaying in a dancer’s gait.

He barked a laugh. “What are you so afraid of?”

She turned back. She gave him a long, teasing look. She smiled. “Getting found out.” 

She disappeared into the lemon trees.

Ares stared after her, eyes goggling, heart hammering. Did that just happen? Was she real? Did he fall asleep and get sunstroke and have a really fucking good hallucination?

He shook his head. He ran his fingers through his hair. 

He collapsed with a dull thud back into the grass.

A blackbird cheeped and began to sing in the bushes.

*

Aphrodite stepped from the sunny, scent-crowded garden and into the cool, soaring interior of the royal house. Zeus and Hera had certainly learned to live in luxury since their battlefield days. The entrance hall was glaringly bright, glitzy flecks in the white marble winking up at the sparkle of chandeliers. Red carpet poured down the central staircase that fluted up to the first floor. Aphrodite rummaged in her bag and fished out a pink post-pit with the directions Hera had said on the phone. First floor, right hand side, third door down. She slipped the post-it away and climbed the stairs.

Having grown up with Poseidon, palaces didn’t put the fear of gods in her that she suspected the grand hall was supposed to. But she couldn’t help but step a little softer, and shy away from going too close to the searingly clean banisters, lest a speck of earth smear on the marble and get her executed. Her mind wandered back to the garden. She was far more comfortable in nature than these gigantic, austere eggshells. She liked warmth and wildness. Like the man she’d met, lying with the golden light on his face, like he’d just fallen out of the sun. She wriggled her shoulders, feeling the power boost she’d got from his passion stir in her body. She’d needed that. You didn’t talk to Hera unless you were at your best. She wondered if Hera had a self-serving policy of hiring hunks, or if she’d got lucky with who was on shift. Really lucky. She sucked the taste of his lust on her tongue, curry spiced and clinging. There was a hurricane in that guy. Thank Fates he was forward, or else what a waste. She hadn't had a buzz like that in... ever? Huh...

She was still thinking about the bumps of his abs and the heat of his mouth, when she rounded the corner to the corridor and a tall, striking figure emerged from the third door down.

Zeus stopped in his tracks, all shoulder pads and smirk. He drew himself up, white suit gleaming against his thunder-dark skin. He flashed Aphrodite a stark, blinding grin. “It must be my lucky day.”

Aphrodite felt like she’d just swallowed a nettle. The sickly, sweet and sour scent of his desires dumped itself into her senses. She closed them off sharply. She clenched her stomach and forced out her most charming smile. “Well, if it isn’t the boss.”

Zeus put his hands in his pockets and chuckled gruffly. “Nah, that’s her in there.” He nodded his head at the door behind him, then ducked it towards Aphrodite with a mocking glance. “Don’t tell her I said that, she might get it into her head to have a coup.”

Aphrodite’s smile darkened. “Maybe I’d like that.”

Zeus laughed heartily. Then stopped and looked confused. He opened his mouth. The door to Hera’s office clicked and swung open. The queen stood in a flowing white shirt and elaborate cravat, one hand on her hip, spun-gold hair knotted severely on top of her head, lips pressed tight. “I’m on the clock, Zeus,” she said tersely.

Zeus looked at her over his shoulder. He ticked his jaw and turned back to Aphrodite. He winked and strode past her, the drum of his shined shoes on the carpet receding down the stairs.

Aphrodite did not watch him go. She picked up her feet and walked to the open door, following Hera inside and closing it behind her, saying breezily, “I’m sorry I’m late, I got chatting with your gardener.”

Hera flicked hard, citrine eyes to her. Aphrodite drew up her chin, but sneaked her hair over the front of her shoulder to shade the hickeys smiling on her skin. Hera puffed a small, irritable gust and sat down on a chaise, crossing her legs. She reached out to a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the table. She slipped a thin cylinder from the carton, tapped it on the mahogany twice, and lit it with a series of chinks and clicks and a snick of flame. She tucked the cigarette into its long-stemmed holder and took a slow drag. She paused, her eyes fluttering. Smoke streamed from her nostrils. Her chest seemed to deflate, her shoulders dropping. 

The room filled with the acrid scent. Aphrodite subtly wafted her hand in front of her nose, still standing by the door. Hera’s eyes flicked back to attention. She looked at Aphrodite and beckoned her over. Aphrodite walked to the other side of the coffee table and sat on a matching chaise. She glanced about the room. It was minimalist, but every carefully chosen item was rich and Rococo. A large window behind Hera looked out over the yellow and green garden and silhouetted Hera a little, sharpening her already cut-glass figure. 

The coffee table had a neat stack of magazines on it, the top of which was the favourite of the gossip rags,  _ Panoptes: Eyes on Olympus,  _ bearing a glamorous cover photo of Aphrodite. She was sitting cross-legged on a desk chair in a scarlet dress with a deep slit up the side. She had a rose in her mouth, biting down on it through a winning smile. The bold headline read:  _ Just Call Her Aphrodite.  _ A quote was printed in curling letters across her shin:  _ “I didn’t come here to get started. I came here to do the next thing.” _

Aphrodite tried to hold in her grin.

“Would you like a coffee?” Hera finally broke the silence.

“I’m fine, thanks,” Aphrodite replied.

There was a soft, hesitant knock at the door.

“Come in!” Hera called. “I ordered you one earlier, you don’t have to drink it.”

A forest green nymph with bottle-bottom glasses came into the room, bearing a silver tray with a silver coffee pot and two cups. She set them silently on the table, not glancing at either of the goddesses. She poured the coffee into the cups, the dark, bitter smell mingling with the cigarette. Aphrodite tipped her head to catch her eye and smile in thanks. The nymph kept her gaze down.

Hera went on as if she wasn’t there, speaking in a clipped, business-like tone that didn’t really imbue her words with sincerity. “I’m pleased we could finally get you to the house. I feel, if we’re going to work together, phone calls only get us so far.”

The nymph gave a small bow and left as silently as she’d arrived. Aphrodite glanced after her, a little uncomfortably. She looked back to Hera, putting her handbag down by her feet and tugging her skirt straight on her lap. It suddenly felt too tight. “You know me, human connection’s always the way.”

Hera eyed her through a plume of pale smoke. “Indeed.”

Aphrodite raised her eyebrows. Hera always looked as if she had something significant to say, but almost never let you know what it was. Almost. 

“Zeus waylaid you in the corridor.”

Aphrodite’s heart sank. The disaster of the royal marriage was well-documented. She’d been expecting her powers to attract its attention. “Just saying hello,” she said tentatively.

“He’s going to try to sleep with you. You’re aware of that, right?” Hera said it like she was telling Aphrodite what time it was expected to rain. She dragged on her cigarette again, her nostrils flaring around the jet of smoke.

Aphrodite’s eyes tingled with the smell. She picked up her coffee and held it close to her face, as a pleasant-scented shield. “He’s going to fail,” she said steadily. “My neck is one of my best features, I’d like to save it.”

“Hmm.”

Aphrodite sipped the coffee, prickling her tongue. “I only repeat my own mistakes. Not other people’s.”

A tense pause. Aphrodite watched Hera over the rim of her cup. Hera’s mouth twitched. She barked a laugh, harsh mirth sparking in her eyes. She leaned back on the cream chaise and spread her arm along its smooth, curved top. “Good write-up in the magazines.”

Aphrodite breathed and put her cup down. “Not bad, huh?”

“I didn’t realise you had quite so many epithets, did you send him those in advance?”

Aphrodite smiled, spreading her palm on the seat beside her and leaning with one shoulder bunched up. “If I had, Genital-Lover would have made the list.”

Hera sighed. “You can’t be serious.”

Aphrodite flashed her eyes gleefully.

Hera tutted. “Mortals are degenerates.”

“Why do you think I like them?”

“Be careful, they’ll turn.”

“Mortals?”

“Yes. But I mean the papers.”

Aphrodite’s smile flickered. She looked down, then back up, a little more soberly. “Oh, I don’t doubt it. The one who wrote that one is already half way there, I think.”

Hera twizzled the cigarette holder between finger and thumb, the dot of red light on the end fizzing. “He took a lot of interest in the Titanomachy.”

Aphrodite snorted. “He fancies himself a ‘real journalist’.” She made comedic air quotes in the air and turned the gesture into a dismissive wave. “I imagine you get sick of hearing about it, after all these years. It’s like you had a Summer No. 1 back before most music listeners were born, but they trot it out every now and then on public radio.”

Hera stayed quiet. Aphrodite closed her mouth. 

They drank coffee in unison. Their cups clinked back onto the saucers.

“Shall we get started?” Hera said stiffly.

Aphrodite nodded.

Hera stood and went to the desk by the window, Aphrodite taking the opportunity of her back being turned to slouch her body and pull an exhausted face. Hera picked up a hefty, black binder and returned with it. She placed it with a thud on the coffee table, slid it round to face Aphrodite, and opened it to the first page. Aphrodite’s eyes scanned down a list of pairs of names, all colour-coded and cross-referenced.

“These are all your couples in progress, are they?” she asked.

“These are half the A’s,” Hera replied flatly.

Aphrodite whistled low. “Busy, busy.” She gingerly turned through the pages. “So, like we said on the phone, you’d like comment on generating chemistry, easing sticking points, etc. I’d like to get some commitment-phobes off my back.”

“Win, win,” Hera said, not sounding convinced.

Aphrodite scooped the binder into her lap, rocked back and settled into the cushions. The throttling feeling of the palace was so much worse than she remembered from her visits with Amphitrite long-ago. Thwarted and corrupted love dripped down the walls and webbed the air, like noxious gas. Having a big, yummy plate of would-be lovers put in front of her was just the thing Aphrodite needed to get her mind off the atmosphere. She dipped her hand into her bag and drew out a glittery, pink pen, with a huge, feathery pom-pom and plastic heart bobbing about on the end. She pulled the cap off with her teeth and let her instinct draw her eyes to a neatly printed name. She ignored the feeling of Hera watching her with a sprinkling of disdain.

“Right,” she said around the pen cap, starting to scribble on the page. “For starters, Absyrtus needs a dominant, so let’s talk power dynamics.”

Hera arched her eyebrow and took a deep draught of smoke.

Out in the garden, Ares leaned against a lemon tree, the waxy leaves tickling his brow, his bulk making the slender trunk creak. He looked up to the office window, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of lavender. He spotted her, as she rose from her seat, gesturing passionately and waving a pom-pom pen. He smiled. He folded his arms over the thrumming of his heart in his chest.


	3. "Just curious, is all."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aphrodite's arrival is ruffling feathers on Olympus, everyone from TGOEM to the royal household is talking about her. Athena does some digging, but mostly finds out about Ares and Zeus' uneasy relationship. Hestia takes matters into her own hands, but Aphrodite will take more than a red berry pie to win over. 
> 
> [CW: Parents arguing in front of and being unkind to adult children. This chapter introduces conflict between the love gods and TGOEM, and so includes them expressing opinions about each other that will become themes throughout the fic. These are absolutely not intended as judgements on any sexual choices, but rather aim to explore the flawed promiscuity/abstinence binary through the eyes of these specific characters.]
> 
> Song: [Rumour Has It, Adele](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_6BBAVfzqM)

Athena ambled through the neatly clipped orchard of her father's estate, her linen jacket hooked on one long finger and slung over her shoulder. The summer sun dappled her chrome face in delicate silver tracery. She turned her nose up to it and took a deep, peaceful breath of fresh cut grass and ripening fruit. She thought about the way the sunshine had flowed through the large, square windows of her house and draped over Hestia's round shoulders and arms. Hestia was warmth embodied, the soft, glossy gold to Athena's hard, glinting silver. Rare and precious. A treasure. Little else could get Athena to meddle in Olympus gossip. 

TGOEM met that morning, Hestia swishing in in a swirl of forest green, carrying a tin of rich honey cake and an air of ruffled concern. 

Athena, Hestia and Artemis gathered around the table in Athena's minimalist dining room. Athena and Artemis went immediately for the baked goods. Hestia pursed her full, amber lips at them. 

"There's something, or rather someone, I'd like to bring to our attention," she said officially. 

"Uhuh?" Athena urged, through a sticky wedge of cake. 

Hestia smoothed her billowing skirt. "Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, seems to have taken residence on Olympus." She fixed the other two with a severe look. 

They blinked. 

She glared. 

"Um, Bumblebee," Athena ventured, "is this a… problem?" 

Hestia sniffed. "I don't know. Would you say that a goddess of sexual intercourse, vanity and indulgence is a problem?" 

Athena pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. She admired Hestia's conviction, but she was perhaps a little too easily scandalised. 

"Has she done anything to be a problem?" Artemis asked, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. 

"She's only been here a couple of weeks," Hestia replied. "But you and your brother work with disease, don't you, Artemis? You know better than anyone that a preventative is better than a cure."

Artemis wrinkled her nose. "So, Aphrodite's a disease?" 

Athena frowned warily. "That's a little harsh, isn't it?" 

"I'm not saying that!" Hestia's paper lantern eyes went wide and batted briskly. She tucked her wheat coloured hair behind her ears. "I'm saying she represents the issues that TGOEM was formed to tackle. And she's new and she's getting a lot of media attention." She fished in her large, carpet bag and produced a magazine with a scarlet cover bearing a glamorous photograph of the goddess in question, emblazoned with the quote:  _ “I didn’t come here to get started. I came here to do the next thing.” _ Hestia held the magazine up, then slid it across the table, like she was presenting a map of terrain to a war council. "What does this mean, 'the next thing'?" 

"She's new." Athena shrugged and leaned back in her chair, crossing her ankles under the table. "She's making a name."

"Precisely." Hestia jabbed her chubby finger at the magazine. "And if she makes a name for herself promoting liberal sexual conduct, what state does that leave TGOEM's name in?" 

Artemis and Athena exchanged a glance. Athena scratched her chin and spoke levelly, giving Hestia a look between stern and reassuring. "TGOEM isn't here to collect virgins like figurines. Let her have her name and we'll have ours. The people who want those different lives will find their affiliations."

"It's not that simple," Hestia said seriously. "Pursuing sex is expected, it's pushed. There's so many models of promiscuity on Olympus, mortals only have to throw a stone and they'll hit a statue of someone obsessing over fertility. Offering another option, even just a space to consider that option, is vital work. Without us, coupling is imposed on people, women especially, from all sides, and it's unfair. We were finally starting to make headway in our Sisyphean struggle, and then along comes a new sensation who seems bent on overshadowing all the space we've managed to carve for ourselves. It's another classic case of flare beating hard work and persistence. We need to nip it in the bud posthaste."

Athena rubbed her jaw pensively. Hestia wasn't wrong, it had been a slog to get TGOEM taken seriously, and taking their eye off the ball could send them back years. The tide of the battle had not yet truly turned. Her father's callous attitude to "free love" had overturned the balance of politics and nature more times than she could count. It was only really her own rise and TGOEM's campaigning that had started to deconstruct the widespread acceptance of the turmoil in his wake. She glanced over to Artemis. The young goddess slouched in her seat, chewing her tongue. She looked unsure. 

Athena leaned forward, her hands clasped together and her elbows rested on her knees. "Tia," she said carefully, "we came together to deal with predation. Aphrodite may have a shared cause there. She could be an ally."

Hestia drew herself up, emphasising her syrup bottle shape. She dove into her bag again and tossed a file tersely onto the table. It landed with a harsh snap. "Multiple documented incidents of jealous rages, tormenting mortals with lust, inflicting uncontrollable passions, even stooping as low as bestiality in her punishments." 

Athena and Artemis eyed the file with furrowing brows. 

Hestia reached out and laid her warm, soft hand over Athena's, looking mood-meltingly into her eyes. Her voice lowered to a pleading murmur. "This is exploitation and control and pain. This is everything we have tried to spare our people from. Right? We took on that duty. To give people free choice. Can we turn away from it now?"

Athena's heart panged. The sweet, homey scent of honey drifted between them. She sighed and folded Hestia's hand between hers. "She's started working with Hera. I'll swing by Dad's and see if I can get a better idea of her angle. Let's not be rash, Bumblebee. Know thy enemy, yeah?" 

Hestia hesitated, then nodded, looking relieved. She bent and kissed Athena's hand, then huffed back into her matronly authority and bustled about serving more cake. "I'm not trying to make an enemy," she said, with the hint of a gripe. "But better safe than sorry. I'm just curious, is all."

Athena emerged from the green patchwork of shadows and looked out along the swathe of flat, bright lawn. An archery range had been set up. She smiled. Ares was poised an unnecessarily challenging way off from the targets, a leather guard strapped to his golden forearm, a graceful, curving bow grasped in his great fist. The grand, modern, royal house rose behind him, dwarfing him uncomfortably. He tugged an arrow from the quiver standing at his shin. He cocked it and drew the string back to the corner of his narrowed eye. The sun trickled down over his powerful body, accentuating his warrior's build. His arms bulged, as he pulled the string back another fraction, a tremor humming through the bow. She saw his shoulder blades rise and settle with a controlled breath. He fired. The arrow skewered the bullseye, rocking the target on its legs. She smiled broader. He was getting good. He'd really filled out on his trip, the final slivers of puppy fat and pockets of weakness matured out of his body. He looked older and stronger. But just as much her dumb, baby brother. 

She sneaked behind him, as he threaded his next arrow, creeping forward until… 

"SNEAK ATTACK!" She pounced on him, battering his broad back and hollering in his ear. 

Ares yapped, the arrow pinging from the bow, shooting over the targets, and ripping through the branches of a pear tree. A pair of doves erupted from the leaves, hooting in panic and flapping desperately away. 

Ares rounded on his attacker with a face like boiling tomato soup. "Thena! I could've shot you!" 

Athena tossed her head back and laughed, clapping his arm. "Not even on your best day, Champ."

Ares growled and pulled her into a hug, smacking her hard on the back. She returned the gesture competitively. They broke apart, rubbing the new bruises. Athena grinned. She was pretty much the only person who'd seen Ares in his half year away, checking in as his mentor. But it was still good to have him kicking around this old place. He made meetings with Dad bearable.

She slotted her hand into her pocket and lounged with her jacket still over her shoulder. "The conquering hero returns," she said. 

Ares nodded, raking his hand through his messy curls to draw them off his face. "Home sweet home." He said it with a grimace. 

Athena's smile flickered. "It's always a little odd trying to fit back in. You get used to it."

Ares glanced away and nodded, then flashed her his cocky grin. "Here to get your ass kicked?" 

"If I am, then I've come to the wrong place," she retorted. 

Ares laughed and flipped her off. She mirrored him. 

"Whoah! Don't set a bad example for the kid." He jabbed his thumb at himself. 

Athena snorted. She looked out across the lawn, ticking her jaw. She looked back to him and searched his face and the permanent ghosts of anger behind his brashness. "Was there much of a fanfare?" she asked hesitantly.

Ares shrugged, twanging the bow string absent-mindedly. "Kinda. Ma was pleased to see me. It's hard to tell if there's gonna be a party or anything, because she throws so many anyway. She said I should do an interview to mark my return, then Dad said he didn't want me booking one until we'd 'confirmed the long-term results of the war'. Which means he'll forget."

Athena's stomach simmered. She balled her fist in her pocket, but kept her voice easy. "Sounds like Dad."

"Yup." Ares puffed out his cheeks and swung the bow to rest in a bar across his shoulders, hooking his wrists over it and hanging them there. "You here to see him?" 

Athena rolled her eyes and nodded. "TGOEM stuff."

Ares blew a raspberry. Athena barked a deep laugh and punched his arm. 

Their sibling snickers were cut off by an irritable, snapping voice, advancing on them from the direction of the house. Athena's shoulders sank at the sight of her father and his wife striding across the grass, bickering like chickens over seed. Zeus' hair whipped behind him and sparkled with the beginnings of lightning. Hera's black eyebrows were arched indignantly, she was clacking furiously on her phone’s qwerty keyboard. 

Athena glanced to Ares and saw his jaw harden and a vein rise in his neck, his sensitivity to anger visibly sore on his sun-stained skin. He lowered the bow to his side and gripped it hard. She shifted her body to shield him slightly. 

"Why is it, Husband, that every time there is a new goddess within fifty miles of any pantheon, you have to go drooling at her heels, like an old spaniel losing his teeth?" Hera hissed. 

"I do not drool!" Zeus snapped, looming over her at her side with seemingly no effect. "I am the linchpin of fucking society, Hera, I have to know who people are!" 

"I will recognise you as the fucking linchpin of fucking society when you start doing any fucking work to hold society together," Hera snarled. "We are hosting five high profile events this month, exactly how many of them are you organising?" She pointedly went back to her phone calendar. 

"Excuse me for having enough to do that I don't have to fill my time with party planning," Zeus grumbled. 

"Like what?" Hera scoffed. "Chasing Aphrodite's skirt?" 

"I am not!" 

Athena glanced again at Ares' darkening expression. His parents were so engrossed in arguing, they were mere paces from the pair of them and hadn't yet noticed. 

“I’m just curious, is all,” Zeus insisted petulantly. “I’m the king, there’s a new goddess at court, and she’s pretty much the most popular thing in the Mortal Realm since pitta bread.”

“I suppose that makes her even more appealing,” Hera drawled.

Zeus ground his shiny, white teeth. “It makes her a great many things, including a possible problem, and including a possible desirable connection.”

“I know all about your desires to connect, Zeus, and I am not going to enable them by answering your pathetic questions about -” Hera stopped in her tracks, suddenly seeing they were no longer alone. She looked at Ares with something between bottled fury, pleading and apology. She tightened her lips and cleared her throat.

Ares returned her look. “Everything OK, Ma?”

Hera blew sharply out through her nose. “Yes, Dear, all fine. Your father and I were just…” She shot Zeus a withering look. “Talking.”

Ares’ glimmering, red eyes flicked to Zeus. Athena looked between them, her body ticking into the heightened awareness of battle, ears pricking, shoulders drawing back. It was instinctive when her brother and father shared a space.

“Talking, huh?” Ares said, his voice a little too low. “What about?”

Zeus puffed out his chest, like a peacock, his tone arrogant and breezy. “Ares, you’ll side with me on this.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“I was just asking your mother a couple of light, innocuous questions about her new colleague, and she flew off the handle, like a damn harpy. A king has to be allowed some openness from his queen when managing his court, don’t you think?” His hard, crystal eyes daggered Ares, demanding filial support. 

“A woman’s gotta be allowed to do her job without dumbass interruptions, don’t you think?” Ares replied through his teeth.

Athena didn’t need to share her brother’s power to feel the angry, electrical hum between him and Zeus. She sighed softly. He’d only been home a few days. Were they getting like this already? She cleared her throat loudly and spoke in a casual tone. “Curiosity’s no crime. Can’t deny I have some myself.”

Three pairs of eyes flashed to her. She suppressed another sigh. “Goddess of Love is quite a title, after all. Not surprising she’s made a stir.” She turned amiably to Hera. “You’re working with her?”

Hera raised an eyebrow. “A little.”

“What on?” Athena inquired.

Hera shrugged. “Partnering mortals up. We can make each other’s processes run smoother.”

“What’s she like?”

Hera looked extremely bored. “Pushy. Talks too much. Quite bright, I suppose. Seems to like what she does, but give her time.”

“See?” Zeus grumbled. “That wasn’t so hard.”

Hera glared murderously at him.

“Do you mind if I ask what made you start that up?” Athena asked quickly.

“Oh,” Hera droned, “I had the foolish thought that love and marriage ought to have some kind of relationship.” Another glare at Zeus. He groaned under his breath and looked away.

The peace of the garden turned to a crispy silence. Even the birds stopped twittering, for fear of incurring some scrap of seething wrath. Athena eyed Ares. He was holding himself so tensely that his outline had turned jagged.

“So!” She changed tack jovially. “A busy social calendar this month?”

Hera nodded. “Zeus’ birthday at the end of the month, of course, and we have the Midsummer gala, the Fates’ fete, my wedding show, and a little, impromptu garden party this weekend.”

“Garden party this weekend? Are you welcoming the warrior home?” Athena clapped Ares on his rock hard shoulder. He didn’t budge.

Hera’s face softened, almost fell, glancing at her son.

Zeus answered in a surly tone to somewhere past Athena. “It's a ‘save the bees’ benefit.”

“What's up with the bees?”

“Nothing,” said Hera. “We do one every now and then in recognition of the role the honey nymphs played in rescuing your father from Kronos.”

“Yeah,” Ares growled. “Dad loves honey nymphs. Does plenty to keep them sweet.”

Zeus rounded on him. “Watch your mouth, I'm not in the mood.”

Ares looked at him flatly. “You have different moods?”

“But can we expect a welcome home party?” Athena interrupted. “Come on, he was gone half a year.”

Hera shifted her weight uncomfortably. “We'd like to, Athena, obviously, but Ares' new role was a tad…"

"Disliked. Resented. Looked down upon." Zeus said. 

"Controversial." Hera corrected in a warning tone. 

Athena bristled, but smoothed her voice carefully. "Surely all the more reason to show full support: kill the rumours that he isn't making a positive difference." She felt Ares shuffle beside her. 

"He's not making a positive difference." Zeus rumbled darkly. "He's war."

Athena put a fist on her hip. "I'm war, people come to my parties."

Zeus gave her a sickly sweet look. "You are tactics and prowess and respectful conventions. Ares is a racoon with a machete."

Athena was buffeted by heat, as Ares snapped, swiping the bow in front of him. "Hey, Old Man, you're the one who put me on the payroll to do it. All this was your idea."

"It was the best I could do with the material," Zeus sneered. 

Ares narrowed his eyes. "Only a bad workman blames his tools."

"Don't call yourself a tool, Son, it'll stick."

"Fuck you!" 

"Alright!" Hera raised her voice, echoing through the slender trees and shaking the leaves. The other three were all twice her height, but suddenly looked oddly diminutive next to her. She exhaled steadily and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Look, we all have a lot to do today…" 

"Except this layabout," Zeus mumbled out of the side of his mouth. 

Hera ploughed on. "Let's all just cool off and see each other at dinner. OK?" 

There was a stiff pause. 

" _ OK? _ " Hera repeated threateningly. 

Athena glanced between brother and father. She could feel Ares' seething heat singing her exposed forearm. She rested her eyes on him coolly. After a strained moment, he flicked his gaze to her. His irises were ringed with crackling red. She held his glare steadily. He seemed to dim. 

He blinked and looked down, fingers fidgeting on the bow. "Uhuh."

"Fine." Zeus grouched. He shot one more dissatisfied look at his children, nothing at all at his wife, and strode away in the direction of the estate gate. 

With his departure, the dense air thinned. There was an audible inhalation from the remaining three. A robin piped up. A squirrel rustled. Ares rubbed the back of his neck.

"You'll get your invitation later today, I sent them with Hermes before lunch," Hera said plainly to Athena. 

Athena smiled and nodded. Hera looked like she might leave, then something tinged her face. She turned to her glowering son, her hand floating forward, as if to touch him. Her voice came softly, meant only for him. "I… I don't care about bees." 

Ares' expression smoothed. He blinked rapidly, trying to extinguish the visible flames in his eyes. "I know."

"It's just an excuse to put everything in yellow." Her drooping mouth twitched up. 

Athena's heart squeezed. His colour. Their colour. Vibrant, joyous, warm, fierce.

Hera ran her tiny fingers over his large hand. He smiled at her reassuringly. Then the tenderness between them broke as quickly as it formed. She straightened up, brushed a loose tendril of golden hair behind her ear, nodded to them both, and marched away back to the house, gripping her phone with white knuckles. 

Ares watched her go, his reassuring smile turning to a weighted frown. 

Athena let her breath go and sucked it back in, resettling into the sweet, zingy aroma of the garden. She nudged Ares playfully on the arm to bring him back. "War's quieter, huh?" 

Ares laughed bitterly, the harsh sound pricking her. Her stomach tightened a little. She rolled her shoulders and spoke more gently. "He didn't mean what he said. When he came to me to talk through crafting a position for you, he had real energy for the idea. He's just sore because the glory didn't go to his capital."

It had been a point of teeth-grinding negotiation between the siblings, as Athena had coached Ares through his first campaign. He'd been dividing his time between several cities, and Athena had encouraged him to give Zeus' patron capital, Elis, extra victories, to keep Dad on side in his early career. The comment Ares made now was a belligerent repetition of what he'd said then. "Then he should make his capital fucking worth glory."

Athena puffed out through her lips. "Can't argue with that," she said honestly. 

He turned his body squarely to her, folding his thick arms over his broad chest and fixing her with a penetrating gaze. What he said next rocked her balance. "Why do you work for him? Why do you go along with his bullshit? You're smarter than him, your city's stronger. You could break away."

The question swirled in Athena's constantly ticking, clockwork mind, messing with the mechanism. Why did any of them go along with him? She preached in the Mortal Realm about true leadership, about fortitude and intelligence and the courage to compromise. Was it disingenuous to pledge her loyalty to someone who didn't display those qualities? She thought about TGOEM. About how he’d made it necessary. Then she thought about Hestia, about hearth and home, about returning from war to something healthy and certain and stable. She looked into Ares' face. For all his new adulthood, she might as well have been visiting her toddler brother again and trying to convince him not to eat the discarded lids on open cans. She put a hand firmly on his shoulder. "If I break, what else breaks?" 

He frowned questioningly.

"It's not about Dad, Ares. It's about Olympus. I am Olympus' defender." She gripped him. "And now…" 

"And now so am I?" he said dully.

She searched his eyes. She smiled with a flicker of pride. "No. No, but you're something. I haven't found a name for it yet. But you're going to bring something important to Olympus."

He shrugged under her hand. "How do you know?" 

She grinned. "Goddess of Wisdom."

His serious face shattered into its familiar shards of sharp mirth. 

Her pride glowed on her face. "Ignore Dad's tantrums. I've never seen a new god take a city so quickly. We all thought you were going to go out and win some battles and come back bloody and bolshy. Ares, you got a capital on your first outing. A whole people turned to you. You must have really inspired them. That's impressive. Seriously." She remembered standing with him on the ramshackle temple roof when it was dedicated, Ares still spattered with blood and gaping in surprise at the crowding mortals, as they cheered wildly for their new benefactor, his baffled protests drowned in Athena's booming applause and the rolling of wine barrels and the bleating of sacrificial goats. 

Ares scrunched up his mouth shyly. "I dunno, Sparta's barely more than an encampment."

"Not by the time you've done with it."

He allowed himself a small smile.

She released his shoulder, feeling it somewhat relaxed after its rigid tension around their father. She flicked it. "Come on, show me your technique."

Ares' face flashed cocky. He lifted the bow and twirled it in dextrous fingers. He took up his stance and cocked an arrow. Athena tilted her head and observed the spread of his feet, the shape of his shoulders, the spot the arrow’s feathers kissed on his cheek. He fired. The arrow whisked from the bow and thunked hard into the second inner ring on the target. He clucked his tongue and plucked another arrow. 

Athena prodded his side. “Don’t slouch in your middle. You built the muscle there, so use it. Engage your core and draw up from your centre on an inhale.”

Ares didn’t look at her, already staring down the arrow, but she saw his body straighten, as he followed her guidance. He released again. The arrow hit the rim of the bullseye.

Athena clapped his back. He threw her a lopsided smile. Another arrow clattered out of the red-feathered bouquet at their feet. 

Athena sucked on her tongue. It felt off digging for intel through Ares. But it had been a long haul to get Hera, Goddess of Marriage, to support TGOEM; her partnership with a new love goddess could be an issue. “So,” she said nonchalantly, “not to press on a sore spot, but sounded like Dad’s off the leash again.”

Ares snorted. “Was he ever on it?”

“Fair point.”

He drew the arrow and let Athena nudge his position about a bit. “He's not actually done anything, though. Yet. Ma's anger isn't high enough.”

“This is her not all that angry?”

The arrow drove furiously into the target, making it sway on its feet, like a drunk. “Yup.”

“How has it been here?” Athena asked with concern. “Since you got back.”

Ares twanged the bow string absent-mindedly, looking down. “Same ol’, same ol’. Except the old man had a break from me being around and now he remembers how much he didn’t enjoy me being here.”

Her voice lowered. “So it’s worse between you.”

“There is no better or worse with us. There’s just keeping it in and letting it out.” 

“You could get your own place, you know.”

He rotated his wrist and adjusted his arm guard. “Ma.” 

Athena closed her lips and nodded. No amount of good advice, no amount of practical sense, no amount of hating her brother being cooped up like a captured golden eagle with clipped wings, could mean anything in the face of his loyalty to Hera. Athena gave herself to causes and states and courts. Ares gave himself to individuals.  _ You showed so much potential this summer,  _ she wanted to say,  _ you are so much more than a human shield.  _ But she knew there was no use. She ran her hand through her sweep of silver hair and lightened her voice. “People sure are worked up about this new love goddess in town.”

He picked up an arrow and twizzled it, the feathers fluttering. “That’s just Dad and Ma all the time.”

“Not just them. Tia’s unnerved.”

He threaded the arrow, chuckling. “Meaning she's gone into a full control freak craze?”

Athena glanced sideways at him with a wry twist to her mouth. “We’re not there yet, but we are stress baking. It was honey cake today.”

“Where's my piece?”

“In my belly.”

“Rude.” Another arrow, another rock of the target.

“You seen her around here much? With your mom, I mean.”

“Who?”

“Newbie.”

Ares looked disinterested, raising the bow to peer along the line of his arm to analyse his aim. “Dunno, what’s she look like?”

Athena thought back to the magazine cover. “Pretty. Like in a polished way. Lavender. Long, swishy hair. Lips. Legs. Tits. All that.” She listed the traits off on her fingers, looking up into the brilliant sky. She looked back down. Ares had fallen alarmingly still, gazing into the middle distance. She spun on her heel to swat him with the jacket still hooked on one finger over her shoulder. “You OK there?”

Ares scratched his temple with the end of the bow, still gazing. “Uhuh. We uh… We definitely met…”

“Oh yeah? What's she like?”

Ares’ eyebrows lifted. “Forward. Fun.” The corner of his mouth poked up. “Freaky.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You sound like you're writing a children's book.”

Ares bit his lip impishly. “Yeah, it's not a suitable story for children.”

Oh. Now it made sense. She flicked his ear. “Tart.”

He laughed and swatted at her. “She started it!”

“Whatever.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, voice distant. “Whoah. Goddess of Love. I thought she was a nymph.”

“The ears didn’t give you a clue?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Her ears were not my focus.”

Athena wrinkled her nose at him. 

“I mean, this explains…” His voice drifted off.

She frowned. “Explains what?”

Ares thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Nah, nothing. Just she was very…” He glanced awkwardly at his sister. “Affecting.”

Athena stuck her finger into her mouth and made a gagging noise. Ares’ warm laughter boomed around the lawn. He shoved her arm and she laughed with him,

He twirled the bow with a flourish and leaned on one hip. “Did I make out with the biggest news on Olympus?”

“Sounds like it.”

He swung the bow across his shoulders again, face brightening. “Hey, you think she'll be at the party?”

Athena smiled in amusement at his puppy dog expression. “No idea. Probably.”

Ares beamed like the midday sun.

Athena pursed her lips. “You know she's like a thousand years older than you, right?”

He winked. “What can I say? I’m a MILF magnet.”

Athena planted her palm over his face, squawking in disgust. “Eeew! We are far out of sibling territory now. More shoot, less talk.”

Ares snuffled into her hand with laughter, prodding her with the bow to free himself. He was still grinning giddily when he raised the next drawn arrow. 

Athena sobered, sliding her hand back into her chinos pocket and fingering her phone. “Ares, I have to ask, for Hestia's sake..." She sighed reluctantly. "Does she seem like she's going to trouble the waters?”

She expected him to snort at her and brush this off. But the bow string slackened a little. A golden shadow passed over his face, putting him deep in thought. It was the same face he pulled when she was teaching him to calculate odds in a battle. A light breeze danced between them, ruffling their hair. He pressed his lips together and looked at her seriously. “If I say yes, will things be hard for her?”

Athena met his gaze steadily. “Not if she doesn't make things hard for us.”

He fell back into thought. His tongue moved around his teeth, rolling his jaw. He only did that when he was tasting ferocity in the air. Or remembering its taste. The hairs rose on the back of Athena’s neck and forearms.

The moment of quiet lasted just a little too long. Eventually, Ares broke it, speaking hesitantly, too diplomatically for him. “She's something powerful. That's all I know.”

“OK.”

“And, uh…”

“Yes?”

“She’s angry.”

Athena took this in and carefully catalogued it, her clockwork brain ticking faster, cogs spinning and whirring. She nodded. “Thanks.” She tossed her jacket onto the grass and patted the small of Ares’ back sharply. “Seriously, stop slouching, core, core, core.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ares elbowed her away and straightened back up with the bow.

The arrow soared into the bullseye with a mighty thud. The poor, punished target finally toppled onto its back.

“The target’s not supposed to do that, you know,” Athena said.

Ares grinned and flexed his bicep. She tutted and let him carry on, as she slipped her phone from her pocket and flipped it open with a  _ click _ . She opened up her text history with Hestia. Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard. She thought for a moment. Then typed:

_ Alright, there’s something about her. Go carefully xx _

*

The doorbell clanged through Aphrodite’s spacious house, reverberating between her ears. She bristled like a cat and dropped her pen, her concentration snapping like a twig. She reluctantly left her Odysseus/Penelope date planning and went to the door. It opened to a tall, plump woman in a long, emerald green dress, that puffed around the shoulders and floated around the ankles. She was a deep, appetising amber, with candleglow hair, sleek as melting wax down her back. She was smiling like an apple and holding a picnic basket from which a delicious, cooked berry scent lazily rose. 

Aphrodite’s face softened, her irritation at being interrupted dissipating. “Hi?”

“Howdy, Neighbour!” the woman said brightly. 

Aphrodite cocked her head, like a parakeet. She’d chosen this house precisely because it wasn’t in the populated part of town. “Neighbour?”

“Well, figuratively,” the woman said, shrugging her round shoulders, her curves bobbing. “I’m Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth. I’m all about home, so I count everyone on Olympus as a neighbour.”

Aphrodite thought this sounded a little cutesy, but she smiled. “That’s nice. I’m Aphrodite.” She extended a hand gracefully.

Hestia took her hand warmly in both of her own, the basket swinging in the crook of her elbow. “Oh, I know who you are, Miss Talk of the Town. I feel like not a day’s gone by this week that I haven’t seen your face on a magazine stand or heard your name in hushed tones.” Her voice was a little too jolly. She squeezed Aphrodite’s hand tight.

Aphrodite laughed coolly and eased her fingers free, rubbing the blood back into them. “I do feel like the papers gave me quite a welcome.”

“Not like I’m going to.” Hestia’s eyes twinkled. She held up the sweet-smelling basket. “Offerings for the goddess,” she tittered.

Aphrodite’s stomach gurgled, her mouth watered. “You sweetheart,” she said with a bounce of her fine brows. 

She stepped to the side and gestured for Hestia to come in. The hearth goddess needed no encouragement. She entered like a balloon blown by the wind, her hem flaring. She bounced to the large kitchen table behind Aphrodite and set the basket down. 

Her eyes roved around the space, falling on the large fireplace and tall fridge. “Oh! What a place!” her exclamation echoed a touch. “But a little empty, isn’t it?” She turned and gave Aphrodite a knowing look. “I bet you’re the kind of gal who likes clutter. Big families, lots of noise, mess everywhere. You look like someone who likes mess.”

Aphrodite gave her hair a self-conscious pat.

Hestia gasped and giggled, flapping her hand. “Oh, no, Dear, I’m so sorry! I don’t mean you look a mess. Quite the opposite! I mean you seem like someone who likes to be snug, that’s all. The minimalism surprised me.”

Aphrodite nodded warily. “I see. Well, it’s my first place out on my own. I haven’t unpacked everything yet, but there’s also a lot more space to fill than I planned. You’re not wrong, I do like clutter.” It unnerved her slightly that this goddess had guessed that so easily. Most people assumed Aphrodite would want everything chic and stylish. But she’d grown up with Poseidon’s merriment and Amphitrite’s expressiveness. The ocean palace was a riot of strange shapes and colours and thingamabobs. And her powers were sparked by the joy between people. She had been a little adrift since moving into this big, echoing place all on her own. She wished it looked less like a show house.

Hestia opened the picnic basket. “It’s red hedgerow pie. Blackberries, raspberries and strawberries in a lattice crust. One of my specialities.”

Aphrodite walked to the basket and bent to sniff the delicious steam wisping out of it. Her cheeks warmed. “Smells amazing. Thank you.”

Hestia beamed blindingly at her. Then kept smiling. And kept smiling. 

Aphrodite cottoned on, suppressing a small sigh, bidding farewell to Ithaca’s budding romance. “Would you like to stay and have a piece?”

“Oh, I’m so low on time, but if you insist! Where’s your crockery?”

Aphrodite set them up at the table and Hestia levered two fat pieces of glistening, ruby pie onto their plates. Aphrodite took the first bite, watched by Hestia, as if by a hawk. The crust crunched, then crumbled into sugary flakes. The berries melted and spilled sweet, tart, hot juice over her tongue. She was flooded with a peculiar nostalgia for a flavour she couldn’t remember. Comfort sank into her belly. She breathed out with an almost moan. “Wow…”

Hestia chuckled and tucked into her dripping slice. “So, ‘Love’. That’s big,” she said with a clear prompt in her voice.

Aphrodite lingered on her bite of pie to delay having to answer. She’d done enough interviews over the past week to know when a grilling was coming. “It is.”

“What kind of love?”

Aphrodite blinked. “All kinds.”

“Family? Platonic? Romantic?”

“Check, check, check.”

Hestia’s fork danced in the soft berries, juice welling around the tines. “Just there’s quite a bit of talk about…” She lowered her voice, as if in a polite, public place. “Sex.”

Aphrodite sucked on a sodden piece of jammy crust to keep from smirking. "I dabble."

Hestia's fork scraped gratingly. "How do you find it fits with your family work?" 

Aphrodite's heart sank a tad. She knew Olympus had some funny ideas, but come on, she’d only just got here. She hadn't even ordered new curtains yet. "Don't you know how babies are made?" she asked drily. 

Hestia’s autumn-cosy manner crystallised at the edges. Her nostrils flared. "I do, of course. But you can't deny that working with the young and working with…" She smoothed her skirt. "...  _ mature topics _ , could be a match ill-made." 

"Fortunately, Hestia, I am a matchmaker." Aphrodite smiled like a fox and waved her fork at the prim goddess. Hestia’s uncertainty wasn't soothed. Aphrodite pressed her lips together and lowered the fresh mound of crimson berries. She straightened her posture and spoke patiently. Might as well start practicing this speech, she was going to have to make it a lot. "I believe it is better that a holistic approach is taken, that ensures healthy development of all kinds of emotional and physical bonds. If I were to split my work between sex and family, fissures would be created that could cause damage."

"Crossover could cause damage," Hestia said too calmly. 

Aphrodite prickled. She breathed in slowly, filling her simmering belly with cool air. "I didn't say crossover. I said holistic."

"Would you mind explaining that?" Hestia put on the most innocent of confused voices. 

A raspberry glooped off Aphrodite's fork indignantly. "Not at all. Let's say a child doesn't want to be touched. Then another child runs up to them and gives them a big hug that they think will feel nice. But it makes their friend cry instead. The offending child is upset and prays to me. I teach them that they need to ask people whether they would like to be touched. One day, that child will be an adult who knows to say 'can I touch you there?'. Then, later, they will have their own child. They will not force touch on that child and will tell them the lesson I taught. One day that child will be an adult who knows they don't have to accept, and should not give, unwanted touch. Do you see?"

“I do,” Hestia said cautiously. “But I’m surprised you’re communicating with children at all.”

“Children love.”

Hestia paused with pursed lips. She nodded curtly. Her fork clattered onto the china and scooped a chunk of crust into her pout. She munched. 

"You don't seem satisfied." Aphrodite said, her patience wavering, the scent of the pie suddenly a little too sharp and sickly. 

Hestia puffed out through her nose and dabbed her lips with the crook of her finger. "I suppose it's just… One hears things." 

A cord of itchy heat twanged on Aphrodite's spine. "What things?" 

Hestia made a very good show of reluctance to say, turning her face down and batting her eyes up, tucking a silky strand of neat hair behind her cute ear. "People driven mad with lust. Tragedies of love - death and war, manipulation and betrayal. The urges mortals turn to us to fight against being... unleashed."

Oh, so her guest was going there, was she? Needles turned to claws in Aphrodite's skin. Her gut lurched and her blood hissed in her veins. She set her jaw and took a deep, steadying breath, cutting through the overpowering pie steam to the clean, herb and petal fragrance of her kitchen. She carefully placed her fork down, the soft ding slicing through the space between her and her visitor. She leaned forward elegantly, slipping her elbows onto the table and tenting her fingers in front of her taut mouth. She swished her hair to fall down one side of her face and levelled a cold, steely glare at Hestia. Her voice was quiet as creeping frost. "One also hears of logs falling out of fireplaces and burning nice, wholesome homes to the ground."

Hestia clenched her fork in her fist, drawing herself up like an affronted ostrich, eyes kindling and upper lip curling. "That is neither here nor there."

"Yes it is." Who was this goddess to judge? Who was anyone? Why was the world so frightened of love? Well, if they wanted fear, who was she to deny them? She continued in her unrelenting, surgical blade tone. "You came here today because you're worried about my darkness. Quite understandable, I'm new, there isn't an emergency procedure for me yet. But don't mistake, you didn't know about my darkness because you suspected it of me alone. You knew of it because we all have it, every god, every power. You just wanted the specifics." The light above the table flickered. Hestia looked up in alarm. Aphrodite felt her magic stir and glimmer. "Let me tell you where I differ, why you're all worked up. It's because hearth and battle and city and marriage and song and medicine and skill are all civilised. They were all made. And so they can be unmade. Mortals decide to tear down the stones or make peace or give up the paperwork, to die without help or silence the singers or stop paying for crafts, you all vanish in a puff of smoke. But not love. Love just happens. Love just is. It can't be forgotten or undone or suppressed.” She opened her senses to Hestia, found the heat in her heart. “You know that, Dear. It's happened to you."

Hestia recoiled, a hand floating to her mouth. 

Aphrodite drove on, shadow creeping at the corner of her vision, two pinpoints of white light striking in her pupils, an amethyst glow painting her body. The light flickered faster. Anger snaked through her veins. "Olympus has worked just ever so hard trimming mortals down into lovely, little box hedges. Here I come with my fresh soil and my wild rains and drenching suns. Who knows what state the garden might be in next year? It's frightening. I sympathise. But, Hestia..." She reached out and laid a hand over the amber one trembling by a plate of blood red crumbs. "It's growth."

Hestia swallowed, brow knitting and creasing, gaping at the threads of purple, sparkling smoke weaving through Aphrodite's tumbling hair. She pulled her hand away abruptly and released a tremulous breath. Aphrodite blinked slowly and tugged her power back beneath her skin. The light stopped sputtering. She tossed her hair with a casual, composed sigh and rocked back in her seat, kicking one leg over the other. "Isn't that what we're really there for?" 

Hestia rallied herself, still gripping her fork like a trident. "I am here to protect. Not disturb."

Aphrodite shrugged. "To each their own. But anyway,  _ Neighbour _ ," she flicked her eyes up to pin Hestia’s, "you needn't get out your best clutching pearls yet. This house is not some den of iniquity."

It was at this precise moment that Hermes came crashing through the door, a pink, giggling goddess wrapped around his waist, like a koala, biting his bottom lip.

Hestia and Aphrodite's eyes widened, but in very different expressions. 

Hermes stumbled forward, hoisting the woman by her ass, her short skirt flapping. His eyes flickered open. He choked into her mouth. "Ah! Peitho! People!" 

The goddess squeaked and twisted in his arms. She looked with shock and then mischievous delight at Hestia’s scandalised expression. Then her gaze ticked to Aphrodite and she grinned sheepishly. 

Aphrodite smiled mockingly at her new PA. Peitho was short and chubby and hot pink, with a head full of jostling, pale, marshmallow ringlets and a spray of glittering, pink freckles over her wide nose and down her arms, giving her a permanent gemstone shimmer. She was the Grace of Seduction, and so, inappropriate as it was to come toppling into her boss' home office with the bewildered mailman, Aphrodite had to hand it to her, it was a job well done. Not that Hermes was especially difficult prey. 

Hestia, however, was not amused. She stood with a bang of the wooden chair and glared like a furnace at the two of them, ignoring Peitho as much as possible. Hermes awkwardly set Peitho down and took half a step away from her, wincing, sucking the sparkly, pink lip gloss smeared over his mouth. As she peeled from his body, his smooth, ruby shirtlessness was revealed. He folded his arms over his pointing nipples. 

"Hermes!" Hestia snapped. "We have discussed attending work with proper attire and proper conduct!" 

Hermes tightened his wrap around his chest. "We have chatted about that, yes, Hestia."

"So, what do you have to say for yourself?" 

"I…" 

Aphrodite stood too and planted her hands on her hips. "Excuse me, this is my house they're in!"

Hestia turned on her, a wisp of white steam leaking from her nostrils. She sniffed sharply to clear it and raised her chin. "Yes. Indeed it is." 

Aphrodite narrowed her eyes at her. She glared back. For a heated moment, the two goddesses looked like they might draw swords. Then Hestia broke their gaze and swept to the open door in a billow of green fabric. 

"Wait," Aphrodite called out. "You forgot your pie."

"It was a gift," Hestia said coldly. "Welcome to Olympus."

The door slammed shut, and she was gone, leaving only the scent of boiled sugar and a ringing irritation in Aphrodite’s body. Aphrodite stared after her, replaying fragments of their conversation and trying to understand how it had escalated so quickly, and what exactly it had escalated to. At least, she tried, until… 

"There's pie?" Peitho and Hermes piped together. Peitho scooted to the cupboards to fetch two forks and threw one to Hermes. He leaped into the vacated chair, Peitho landing in his lap. They slid the basket over to them and began to shovel the still warm treat into their smudged mouths. 

Aphrodite looked at them with a drily raised eyebrow. "Do come in, make yourselves at home." 

"Thanks, Boss." Peitho blew her a berry-sweet kiss across the table. 

Aphrodite shook her head. "You know, no other goddesses let their staff behave this way."

Peitho blinked. "Duh, why do you think I didn't apply to work for any other goddesses?" She fed Hermes a squidged strawberry, he gave her a dazzling grin around the morsel. 

Aphrodite dropped to perch on the edge of the table and smiled in amusement at them, their soft, flirtatious air rubbing balm into the thorn scratches left by Hestia. Peitho had been on the payroll for a week and had already settled into a level of comfort Aphrodite usually took years to cultivate. Her perky sweetness and confident familiarity had made Aphrodite uneasy at first. But what could she do? The woman was seduction itself. It was very difficult not to feel good around her. And as she'd watched Peitho interact with their various visitors, seen her playfulness with Hermes and cordiality with Demeter and smooth manners with Apollo, she'd come to understand that Peitho had an element of the chameleon, adapting to whatever she sensed in the environment to draw affection out of whoever she was with. Away from home and increasingly, it seemed, an object of suspicion, Aphrodite had needed her unprofessional ease. Had needed the instant feel of having known each other a long time. And Peitho had realised it.

"What was Hestia doing here?" Peitho asked deridingly with her mouth full of Hermes' fork, patting his face. 

"I'm really not sure. But we did not hit it off," Aphrodite replied, swallowing the last of the acid in her throat. 

"Bet it was TGOEM business," Hermes said. 

"TGOEM?" Aphrodite asked.

Peitho rolled her eyes so hard, she looked like a pinball machine resetting. "The Goddesses of Eternal Maidenhood."

Aphrodite’s gut knotted. 

"They're a sort of women's welfare organisation," Hermes explained, fishing in the basket for another hunk of pastry. 

"They're a pressure group," Peitho scoffed. "Bent on moralising every woman into maidenhood. They claim it’s for our own good, of course."

Aphrodite reached over, stuck her finger in the basket, scooped some red goo, and sucked it off her finger. "What good?" 

"Protection from the wiles and wills of the likes of this one." Peitho ruffled Hermes' hair. He laughed and tickled her side. She hiccupped and elbowed him, making his abs crunch. 

"Then why not make men swear virginity?" Aphrodite said flatly. "Oh, wait, yeah, patriarchy."

"That bitch," Peitho agreed. 

"The worst," Hermes added, prodding Peitho's fork out of the way to get to more sugar. 

"She can really bake though." Peitho won the fork duel and filled her mouth. 

"Well, that explains some stuff," Aphrodite mused. Her stomach wriggled uncomfortably. She’d assumed Hestia was just some moral madam on a misguided mission. But if she was a political voice already set against Aphrodite’s work, that was a different matter. Her finger trailed over her lip. "Do I need to be worried?" 

Peitho glanced up at her with twinkling, unfazed eyes. "Nothing we can't handle, Boss."

Aphrodite tried not to show her concern.

“You OK, Lady Love? You look put out,” Hermes said gently.

Aphrodite looked into his boyish, open face. “Not put out. Just curious, is all.”

Peitho scoffed. “They’re all about everything you came here to spare people from. Control and judgement and wilful ignorance. Duty calls, Boss, take ‘em down.”

Hermes smiled sideways at her. “TGOEM and the Grace of Seduction are not good buddies.”

She puffed up like a poodle. “It’s like having my own personal police investigation.”

Aphrodite’s gut knotted tighter. But then a flame sprang up in it. She’d worked for centuries against this, against energetic girls like Peitho and sweethearts like Hermes being treated like curse tablets, against the extinguishing of passion and pleasure for some arbitrary “moral good”. If an organisation like this had sprouted on Olympus, then it seemed she’d moved at exactly the right time.

She dipped into the basket for more sticky fruit. "So, did you intercept the paper boy on his flight, or was he on my doorstep with real post?" 

"Oh." Hermes' ears went somehow even more red. He dusted off his hands and rummaged in the satchel he'd dumped by the chair, rocking Peitho in his lap. "Second one." He held out a crisp, yellow envelope addressed to Aphrodite in curling black letters. 

She took it, peeled it open, and slid out the card inside. It was printed in the same curling lettering onto thick, silken paper, also in yellow with a stark, black border. An invitation to a ‘save the bees’ garden party this weekend at the royal estate. Aphrodite smirked. "Save the bees?" 

Hermes shrugged. "I'm just the messenger."

Aphrodite's mind wandered to the sprawling royal gardens. Then to a sun-soaked face, a warm, tactile body, and a hot, chasing mouth. Her heart skipped. It had been such a winding day, her encounter with the gardener seemed so long ago. But it was only this morning, and now she would be back there before the week was out. Maybe she could find him again.

"You're gazing romantically," Peitho accused, her magenta eyes glittering at Aphrodite. 

Aphrodite blinked at her, acutely aware of the darker hue her cheeks had gone. She waved the invitation dismissively. "Just thinking, it might be nice."

"Hestia will be there," Hermes said a little hesitantly. 

Aphrodite's full lips drew back over her keen teeth. "All the better."

* 

“You are going to love me.” Sinoe dropped an envelope onto Acteon’s desk, fluttering onto his keyboard over his rapidly moving fingers.

Acteon looked up at his fellow writer, his peacock blue hair scrunched at the front where he’d been running his hand through it. Sinoe flashed her brown eyes at him. The shrill ringing of the  _ Panoptes  _ magazine office phones and whir of printers came rudely into his consciousness. He picked up the envelope. It was sunflower yellow and embellished in plumed, jet calligraphy. 

“What’s this?” he asked, nudging his glasses up his nose. “I love you already, by the way.”

“Gross, I’m calling HR,” Sinoe said, perching on his cluttered desk. “Seriously, open it.”

Acteon fumbled with the seal and extracted a stylish, yellow card. “A party invitation? For bees? I hate parties. I hate bees. Do I have to hate you now? I thought we agreed I love you. What am I meant to do with this sudden change?”

Sinoe poked his chair with her toe. “It’s a royal party, Hera’s hosting. All the elites will be there. I was supposed to cover it, but it’s my niece’s birthday, so I suggested you.” 

Acteon’s grip tightened on the invitation. “Will  _ she _ be there?”

Sinoe nodded. “For the record, I think your thing about wanting to write more on Aphrodite is kinda weird. But she will be there, in her natural, socialite habitat.”

“It’s not weird,” Acteon huffed. “Good reporters have a gut. I have a gut. She’s… She’s in my gut.”

“She’s in your gut?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. You construct sentences for a living.”

Acteon looked at her flatly. “Good reporters have a gut,” he repeated.

“You’re not a good reporter,” Sinoe pointed out. “You’re a paid stalker who gives real journalists a bad name.”

“Yeah, but not for long.” Acteon looked down at the rich, yellow paper and stroked his thumb over the smooth surface. “This goddess is my ticket out of here.”

“You’ll be missed,” Sinoe drawled, standing up and starting to walk off.

“I know you mean that deep down!” he called after her.

She turned back and yawned theatrically.

“I’m not being weird!”

The yawn grew. He turned back to his desk and grumbled under his breath. “I’m just curious, is all.” 

Just curious. Curiosity was all an investigator had, after all. And ever since that interview, this new goddess had his in a frenzy. He didn’t know what, but there was a story following her. He was going to find it. And show it to the world.


	4. “This is a royal party.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the day of Hera's "Save the Bees" garden party. It's a chance for both Aphrodite and Ares to ingratiate themselves in Olympus society, but Olympus society can be anything but gracious. Frustrations build until they're both looking for escape.
> 
> [CW: Incident of parental gaslighting. Mild slut shaming. Apollo is here but doesn't do anything much.]
> 
> Song: [Shiny Happy People, R.E.M.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYOKMUTTDdA)

“You can do this.” Hermes put his warm hands on Aphrodite’s shoulders and rubbed them, like a wrestling coach does his guy on the ropes.

Aphrodite gave him an indulgent look and folded her arms, privately enjoying his confident touch. “I know, Hot Sauce. I’ve been to a party before.”

“Yeah, but this is a royal party.”

“I’ve been to a royal party before. I grew up with a king.”

Hermes stroked his hands down to her upper arms and curled his fingers around her biceps. “Hera is differently royal to Poseidon and Amphitrite. You’ve not been to one of these shindigs in years, it’s kind of a debutante ball for you. Aren’t you nervous at all?”

“It’s like you want me to be.”

“Well, if you’re not, I don’t get to be your handsome hero.”

She chuckled and pinched his chin between her thumb and foreknuckle. “You’re my handsome hero, Hermes.”

He squeezed her arms again. “Damn straight.”

They stood together at the gate to Hera and Zeus’ estate, the prim plucking of a harp tip-toeing through the wrought iron and the tall hedges. 

After bursting in on her tense encounter with Hestia, Hermes had taken it upon himself to make sure Aphrodite’s next brush with Olympus society - the Save the Bees garden party - was more enjoyable. He’d shown up unasked at her door that afternoon with a corsage and a dashing smile, his scarlet tie askew and his hair combed into a ponytail that did nothing to tame its wildness. 

“Oh My Gods!” Aphrodite had exclaimed, leaning back to call out to no one. “Mom! My prom date is here!” 

Hermes had bowed deeply, slipped the corsage on her wrist, and offered her his arm. She hadn’t thought twice about accepting. Hermes was the only Olympian she really knew. Poseidon and Amphitrite had taken her up the mountain once, but it... hadn’t gone well. Since then, she’d stayed in the sea, with Hermes as her only glimmer of that strange, celestial brightness. But as she’d met the rest of the Olympians, she’d come to realise Hermes’ brightness was something entirely its own. His seamless slipping between realms muddled sunlight and moonglow and neon, underground stars into his essence. Hermes was a trick of the light. 

She tugged the strap of her bag straight and rolled her shoulders, the distant harp making her stomach ripple. Maybe she was just a little nervous. Last time really hadn’t been ideal, after all.

_ Don’t think about that. You’re older now. Like the boy says, you can do this. _

She shrugged off Hermes' comforting hands and straightened his tie for him, letting her eyes rove around the sharp angles of his body in his stark, black suit. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this smart.”

Hermes grinned. “I clean up nice, right?”

“Very nice.” She smiled and patted his cheek. She looked down at the corsage he’d given her, an opulent, yellow rose, embellished with sweetpea and a sprig of lavender. “As is this. You’re a real sweetie pie, you know that?”

Hermes flapped his hand at her. “Aw, shucks.”

She beamed into his face. She stroked her hand over his lapel. His chest rose into her touch. She drew her hand away slowly. A crimson rose was left flourishing in his buttonhole. Hermes looked down at it and smiled. She felt a wave of pleasant heat wash over her from his heart. She closed her eyes and hummed. Then sucked it down and gave his chest one more pat.

Hermes blinked in confusion. “Hang on, were you just drawing power from me?”

Aphrodite shrugged coyly.

“You were! You damn witch!” he laughed.

She cackled and fluttered her fingers at him, like she was casting a spell in a pantomime. 

He batted her hands away.  “Yeah, well, laugh all you want,” he said, securing the rose in his buttonhole. “But I’m a psychopomp, so, if I’m escorting you anywhere, you’re doomed.”

She snorted, tugging his arm roughly and looping it into hers, turning them to face the looming plumes of wrought iron. “Come on, Hot Sauce. Let’s go kick bee butt.”

“No, we like the bees at this thing.”

“Olympus’ butt then.”

They bumped their shoulders together and marched through the gate.

Aphrodite hadn’t been to this part of the royal gardens before. Rather than cosy orchards and sprawling grass, this area was dripping with vibrant grandeur. Palms erupted from crowded beds of tropical plants, their branches fanning overhead to shade the enclosure. They laid criss-cross patterns over the rainbow of guests in their crisp linens and painterly pastels. Rich blooms bubbled from the ground - draconic bromeliads, powder puff geraniums, hollyhocks like satellite dishes, icing sugar plumeria, mouth-watering hibiscus. Just off to the side was a large greenhouse, shining in the white-gold sun, crowds of contained plants rippling in a heat haze on the sizzling glass. The colours and scents were thrown over Aphrodite like a bucket of sweet water, drenching her senses and drowning her nerves.

Her nerves resurfaced, however, when her eyes refocused on the crowd. There were a lot of people here. A lot of important people. A lot of conflicting, confused emotions. Aphrodite could already begin to taste them, the bottled up lusts and longings like rum, the melancholy histories and sour break ups, like corked wine turning to vinegar. She leaned into the warmth thrumming through Hermes’ suit jacket.

“Ready?” he asked, nudging her.

She flashed him an unfazed expression. “Of course.”

“Who do you wanna go talk to?” 

“No one, let’s find the food.” She needed to get that flavour off her tongue.

“Woman after my own heart.” Hermes started to steer her towards the buffet table.

“I’m the Goddess of Love,” she replied slyly. “I’m after everyone’s heart.”

*

“You can do this.” Hera stopped them in the doorway of the house, reached up, and laid her small hands on Ares’ biceps, swelling through his crisp, new uniform jacket. 

“It’s just a party, Ma. Fates.” Ares shrugged her off and stuffed his large, clumsy hands into his pockets.

Hera pursed her lips, took his forearms gently, and pulled his hands back out of his pockets. She lightly pushed his shoulders up, ironing the slouch out of his body. He always stooped instinctively when talking to her, she was so damn tiny. Had she gotten smaller while he was away? Everything had felt smaller since he’d got back.

“It’s not just a party, Lamb,” Hera said with the softness reserved for him. “This is a royal party, and your first one since you got home. I want you to feel like you’re getting to make an entrance, my darling debutante. You…” Her brow crinkled a little. “You did really well.”

Ares unknotted his mouth and looked down at her warmly, mumbling, “Thanks, Ma.”

She puffed through her nose, gusting her emotion away like cobwebs with a spring breeze. “Now get out there. And try to at least circulate once before you devour the buffet.”

“Are there those cupcakes from the Lotus Eaters bakery?”

“Yes.”

“Then I make no promises.”

Hera shook her head, clamping her mouth shut to hide her amused smile, and shooed Ares out of the house. 

The hum of polite chatter and pretty harp music reached them, as they rounded a palm tree like a burlesque burst of ostrich feathers. Ares noticed his mother shift into gear, face setting into a picture of invulnerable charm, a golden armour of wit and status affixing itself to her delicate frame. He, on the other hand, felt shelled, exposed and about to be dropped into boiling water. He could charge face-first into a line of spears, but dealing with the veiled politics behind these merry, little gatherings made him seasick. He could feel it already, too spicy on the tip of his tongue and sharp like cacti needles under his skin, the web of anger that constantly buzzed like an electric fence around any crowd of Olympians. Old wounds and everyday betrayals, sore power shifts and secret plots, humiliations and harassments and ordinary huffs. At least when you were on the battlefield, everyone’s anger was doing something, going in the same direction. It gave him a wave to ride, a current to course. Anger here was sulky and perpetually unresolved, reeking like a jar of pickles left out on a hot day. 

He sloped behind his mother, drawing back, as Demeter waved to her. She went striding off, spreading her arms and greeting her old friend with a peck on each cheek and only the faintest hint of a bored sneer. He stuffed his hands back in his pockets and looked dully around, hunching his shoulders, turning his stunning, gold face down, trying to make himself marginally less eye-catching than a fire in a theatre. His stomach grumbled. He looked over at the buffet table.

His heart stopped.

She glimmered in the crowd, an orchid among daisies, her dress cuddling her melody of a body, pale yellow fading to deep peach, turning her into a walking tequila sunrise. Her lavender hair was styled on top of her head in a whipped cream curl, dressed with frangipani. The sun ran adoring lips over her bare neck and shapely shoulders and long, elegant legs. Her bright peach, shiny stilettos accentuated her unusual height and her hypnotic grace. She had her back to him, a fine wisp of shadow trickling between her bare shoulder blades and down her spine to crown her full, firm ass, wrapped tight by the dress. His palms tingled with the memory of cupping that ass and pulling her against his body, her thick thighs squeezing his hips, her clever fingers in his hair. 

Aphrodite. 

He knew her name now. And what a fucking name. It was a spell all on its own. 

_ Turn around. _

He willed her to show him her face, to dazzle him with her eyes and melt him with her mouth. She was talking to a laughing and annoyingly debonair Hermes, a cocktail fizzing in one of her hands and sloshing a little in the glass, as she gestured through whatever anecdote she was seemingly telling. He strained his ears to catch her voice. She was too far away.

_ Come on, stop staring. She’s just hot. So you had a moment, don’t be a creep about it.  _

He tried to look away.

_ I mean, she is next to the food, though, which is where I was headed anyway, so… _

“Ares, come say hello!” His mother’s voice snipped the end of his thoughts. He blinked and spun around to see her still with Demeter, over by the harpist dryad with green fingers flowing over the strings. He flexed his hands and his neck, pushed Aphrodite from his mind, and forced his feet towards Hera.

*

“And then the satyr says to the naiad, ‘You might be wet, but I’m fucking horny!’” Aphrodite finished the joke on a squeak of escaping giggles.

Hermes choked on his beer and doubled over in echoing guffaws. “Oh, I knew that was coming!”

Aphrodite let loose the fountain of giggles and poured them into her gin and elderflower tonic, the fruity, medicinal scent simultaneously clearing and muddling her head. She gulped and hiccupped softly. 

Hermes ran his hand across his brow and loosened his tie, coughing out the last of his laughter. “OK, OK, I’ve got one.”

Aphrodite poked her sprig of rosemary around her glass, juicing the fragrant leaves into the mixture. “As long as it’s dirty.”

“Obviously.” Hermes took a swig of beer, smacked his lips, and began. “OK, so this centaur’s into pony play…”

“Gods, you’re not bothering a lady with that one, are you?” A snooty drawl cut across Hermes, his blithe face turning disgruntled.

“You’d think a guy with as much style as you wouldn’t go about cramping everyone else’s,” Hermes griped, turning to his roommate.

Apollo stood at their sides in a dapper, cream, linen suit and indigo shirt, his smooth, black coffee curl of hair combed back off his chiselled features. Aphrodite immediately caught his strong, expensive cologne, and underneath it a peculiar flavour in his heart that she hadn’t yet been able to place, bitter and somehow… off. She wrinkled her nose and washed her tongue with gin.

“To have your style cramped, you have to have it to begin with,” Apollo said, with a smirk.

Hermes threw his head back and barked a laugh, like a terrier. “I’m gonna go home first and lock you out!”

Apollo frowned quizzically. “Except I have my own keys?”

Hermes grinned and bounced his eyebrows. “Do you?” He held up his index finger. Hooked onto it was a set of house and car keys, with a little mirror and golden laurel leaf on a chain. He spun them around his finger. “Can’t wait to take those hot wheels out for a spin.”

Apollo’s eyes flashed dark gold. “Hermes!” He grabbed Hermes’ wrist and snatched the keys off him roughly.

Hermes made a mock show of cowering. “OK! Whoah! I surrender!”

“Asshole.” Apollo crammed the keys back into his pocket.

“Can’t help it, God of Thieves.” Hermes shot Apollo a finger gun, then reached onto the buffet table, plucked a spinach puff, and popped it whole into his mouth, cheeks bulging.

Apollo looked down his nose at him, one nostril drawing up. He turned to Aphrodite, face smoothing into sweetness, voice like vanilla fudge. “Sorry about him, can’t take him anywhere.”

Aphrodite laughed mirthlessly. “I know, right? Don’t tell anyone he brought me.”

Apollo’s lip curled attractively off his teeth. “Your secret’s safe with me. I have to be seen with him all the time, I don’t know how my reputation withstands it.”

“Heg!” Hermes yapped through mashed spinach. “Wadge it!”

Aphrodite smiled and ignored him pointedly. “Sometimes it’s like, OK, I didn’t think this was the kind of party with clowns.”

“Didee!”

“Chew faster, Hot Sauce, or you won’t be able to stop us bad-mouthing you.”

Hermes chewed furiously, glaring between them. On the word “us”, Aphrodite felt a nudge of Apollo’s desire, like a hot poker. 

_ Oops. _

Her smile wavered. She shut herself up with another swallow of alcohol. Apollo looked down at her with a shimmer rimming his midnight irises. That bitter flavour sneaked through her drink. She angled her body a little away from him and looked back to the chomping Hermes. 

He swallowed noisily and heaved a breath in. “Well, aren’t you two unexpected partners in crime.”

Another hot poker nudge. She felt Apollo shift his weight closer to her. She angled another inch around.

“There you are!” A harsh, buoyant voice relieved her, catching Apollo’s attention. 

They all looked up to see Artemis in a tight, black mini-dress, marching up to them, Athena lounging on her tail in a light blue suit. 

“Arty!” Hermes’ face brightened. She hopped up to him and they bumped their fists. 

Apollo folded his arms and drew himself up authoritatively. “What are you wearing? That’s hardly appropriate for a garden party.”

Artemis glared at him. “Your dick attitude is hardly appropriate for a garden party.”

He rolled his eyes and stuck his lower lip out. “No, come on, seriously, everything’s on damn display.” His eyes darted to Athena. “You can’t be OK with this.”

Athena shrugged. “TGOEM doesn’t have a dress code.”

So, Athena and Artemis were in TGOEM too, and Apollo was apparently Chief of Wardrobe Police. Aphrodite leaned a little towards Hermes, suddenly feeling outnumbered. That said, the impression Hestia had given of that little group hadn’t been one that would allow Artemis out looking like such a fox. Aphrodite eyed Athena, she had a still water aura, deep, but calm. 

“Aphrodite,” Apollo broke into her thoughts in a petulant tone, “You’re a glamorous woman, you wouldn’t wear something like this in the day, right?”

Aphrodite met Apollo’s eyes with barely veiled disdain. Then she raised her chin and said in a finite, clear tone, making eye contact with Artemis. “I think you look great. You’re an athlete, right? So fuck yeah, show it off. Fates know, men’s clothing does all the time. And it’s a gorgeous colour on you, I admire someone who sticks to their style, no matter the event.” She shot Apollo a final, pointed look, then smiled encouragingly at the young goddess.

Artemis’ cheeks darkened to blackberry. She tucked her sleek sweep of shining, jet hair behind her ear. “Thanks.”

Aphrodite slurped down her sweet, flustered moment. Hermes caught her eye and winked subtly. Apollo looked cowed, jaw jutting. 

Aphrodite glanced up and found Athena watching her unreadably. She tried to reach out with her senses. She hit that cool water wall. Athena was clearly well-practiced at Olympus mingling.

“I don’t believe we’ve met properly,” Aphrodite said breezily, extending her hand to Athena, slicing past Apollo and Artemis.

Athena glanced at her hand, then extended her own and shook it firmly. Her touch was calloused and cool and strong. They broke apart, leaving Aphrodite with the same tingle as picking up a cold glass. Athena was often in the headlines, a litany of victories and policies and breakthroughs with her name on. But photographs hadn’t prepared Aphrodite for the goddess’ stoic impressiveness. She was tall and muscled. Her aging had ceased older than most, giving her an unsettling gravitas, magnified by her metallic skin and the silver scarring on her hewn face and neck. She looked like a sword forged for some noble destiny. She seemed to anchor the environment where she stood. Her onyx, diamond-encircled eyes stayed rested on Aphrodite, completely non-confrontationally, completely without intent, smart, but serene. 

Aphrodite felt like a specimen being scanned by a computer. She drew herself up, forcing herself through the nerves. “So, is the bees thing close to your heart?”

_ Wow, Dite… Smooth… _

Artemis scoffed. Hermes chuckled. Athena smiled placidly and brushed her fly-away hair off her temple. She spoke in a refined tone. “Honey nymphs play an important role in maintaining society. Honey was the first natural product mortals started to harvest and craft with, you see. Most of my work centres on cities, so, yes, I suppose it is.” She thumbed her jaw. “They are emblems for many mortals of a sort of civilising power. Taking something natural and making it into a human product. It’s symbolic of the turning away from our base selves to something higher, something with judgement and dignity.”

_ Judgement and dignity. Ugh. _

A serpentine tongue of fire licked under Aphrodite’s skin. “Oh, really?” Her voice deepened and oozed sensuously and dangerously from her pout. “I always thought of honey as the ultimate symbol of indulgence. Pulled straight from the earth. Stolen from a stinging creature that spends its days in a cycle of craving for and drunkenness on nectar. Either lavished on a sore body or poured over the tongue. Sweet. Sticky. And as gold as the sin of Midas.” 

Three stabs of desire struck Aphrodite, as she finished her sultry speech: mischievous from Hermes, surprised from Artemis, and disgusted from Apollo. So, that’s what that bitterness was, he was one of those people who was repulsed by the people he wanted, because he was too good for that. What a cock. His sister was fun, though. She shook it off and held Athena’s unwavering gaze, knocking back zingy gin, the rosemary sprig tickling her cheek. “Don’t you think?”

Everyone’s gaze whisked to Athena. She didn’t react to it. She tilted her head, regarding Aphrodite with sharpened, but still calm eyes. She paused a moment, totally relaxed in the harp-tinged silence, no rush to prove anything or discomfort at making people wait. Then she smiled, the slightest twinkle in her eye. “I suppose there are always multiple interpretations.”

Aphrodite wasn't sure what to do with that, which was probably Athena's aim. Her fingers shifted on her glass. 

"Ahem…" The sound of a throat clearing nervously. 

Everyone turned to see a short, young man with scaly, sand-white skin and scrunchy, peacock blue hair, tangled around two stubby horns. He wore a shabby, ill-fitting, brown suit with a mustard yellow tie. His wet, beady eyes were magnified by a pair of thick, square glasses. His hand was clenched on a notepad and a boxy camera hung around his neck. Every Olympian face took on a studied blankness. Paparazzi. 

Aphrodite peered at the man. Something about him was familiar. She ran his rough, iridescent face through the bursting memory banks of people she'd met since moving. Her first big interview run. The too-keen one. 

“Aeschylus?” she said.

The man’s cheek twitched. “Acteon.”

“Yes, sorry, meeting so many people at the moment.”

“It's OK.” He looked awkwardly at the gathering of gods, then took half a step towards her and lowered his voice. “Could I maybe borrow you? For a comment?”

The other four notice the singling out. She hesitated, then decided that he may actually be easier than staying with this crowd. She nodded at him and waved her companions goodbye. 

Hermes touched her wrist and leaned in conspiratorially. “For the record, my punchline was ‘unbridled lust’ and the journey there was gold."

A laugh loosened the knot in Aphrodite’s gut. She patted his arm. "I believe you, Hot Sauce." 

They grinned at each other. She put her empty glass on the table and walked away after Acteon. When they were at more of a distance, next to a row of heliconia like poleaxes, Acteon stopped and dashed his hand across a glisten on his forehead. Aphrodite carefully closed herself to the emotions battering about in his rib cage. He was full of a scratchy, grabby sort of desire, cold and clammy, like raw fish. It clung unpleasantly, she rubbed her arms. 

“So,” she began brightly, “look who got an invite to this exclusive event. You a big bee guy too?”

Acteon indicated his camera. “I'm being paid to be here.”

“That must be nice.”

Acteon fidgeted inside the box of his jacket and wiped his forehead again.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

His mouth sloped down. “Half cerastes and half naiad, my body never knows whether it wants to be hot or cold.”

She nodded, patting her hair to give her something to do. That explained his rather unusual appearance, the scales on his face coupled with the dewy, blue tinge. It wasn’t a pairing she’d heard of before, though, a horned, spineless, serpent creature and a water nymph. She said so, keeping her tone conversational.

He shot her a rueful smile. “The perversions of lust.”

She stiffened.

He stammered a little and looked at his shoes. “Um, that was poetic.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What was?”

“That thing you said about honey.”

“Oh. You were eavesdropping?”

“Um… Yes.”

“Huh. Well, thanks.”

Acteon’s cold eyes searched her, slicking around her body quite openly, almost oblivious to the fact he was visible. His tongue flashed over his weak lips. 

“You had a couple of questions for me,” Aphrodite prompted.

He blinked and nodded, flipping open his notebook and taking a pen from his pocket. He clicked it a few times. Yep, it was definitely that guy.

“I see you’ve been chatting to some TGOEM members,” he said, eyes staying down on his notebook. 

“Well spotted.”

“Unusual bedfellows for you, I would have thought.” He looked up, clicking his pen.

The sound poked Aphrodite’s ear drum. She smiled like a knife. “And who says I’m taking everyone I talk to to bed?”

Acteon gave her a slippery half grin. “You are a love goddess.”

Aphrodite bristled. She hid it and rolled her eyes. 

His smile petered out. He cleared his throat and looked back at his notebook. “Um, if you’re here, I suppose your relationship with Hera must be going well?”

She tossed a stray lock of hair off her temple and answered without expression. “It is. Hera really knows what she’s doing, I’ll give her that.”

His beady eyes darted to her, his horns glinting in the sunlight. “You’ll give her that? Sounds reluctant. Are you not getting along?”

Aphrodite suppressed grumbling in her throat. “It’s an expression.”

“Just, two strong women, such as yourself, there was speculation you wouldn’t be able to cooperate.”

“Speculation from who? You?”

Acteon flinched under her white-fire stare. He scratched his small nose under the slit nostrils. “No... I only mean…”

“This myth about strong women can’t get along is just divide and conquer. It’s cliché and unrealistic,” Aphrodite stated. “And what is a ‘strong woman’ anyway? Women are strong, they can’t be anything else in this world. You don’t mean ‘strong women’, you mean ‘influential women’ or ‘egotistical women’ or ‘ambitious women’. You mean ‘career bitches’. You’re using it as a slight and hoping I won’t notice because it makes me feel above ‘other women’.” She took a breath of warm, perfumed air and shoved it slowly out of her lips to steady herself, sweat prickling on the back of her neck. “Not today, Acteon, it’s too hot out.”

He pressed his lips together and drew his shoulders up, eyes darkening. He ground his teeth and glanced down. “Pretty corsage.”

“Thanks,” she replied tersely.

“Who’s it from?”

“Hermes.” She answered without thinking, then saw his eyes flash behind his goggling glasses. His tongue lashed his lip again. Her stomach sank.  _ Here we go. _

“Hermes? Quite the eligible bachelor. Are the two of you…?”

She cut him off. “We’re friends.”

He clicked his pen. “I thought you didn’t have friends on Olympus, being so new.”

“Hermes doesn’t only work on Olympus, does he?” Her voice was getting lethal, like a blade sharpening on a stone. This was much more than asking for a comment.

“Still, kind of a romantic gift," he said suspiciously.

“It was a joke.”

“Clue me in?”

“No.”

“Alright.” He huffed out and scribbled in his notebook, a few strands of hair pasting to his clammy brow.

Aphrodite tapped her foot irritably.

He looked up again, eyes focusing like a microscope on her face. “Do you have any romantic interests, though? I notice you were stood with Apollo. He was Olympus’ Sexiest Man for  _ Panoptes  _ last year.”

“What bland taste,” she said under her breath. “No, I’m not seeing anyone right now.”

“Not practicing what you preach?”

“What do you think I preach? Because it’s not ‘glue yourself to any stranger to avoid single life’.”

“What is it, then?”

She opened her mouth to say something harsh, but rolled her tongue back and chewed it. She supposed she really ought to take any opportunity she could get. She straightened up, hands still proudly on her hips, and spoke in a gentler, professional tone. “We’re all kindling. If you feel a spark, fan the flames.” Hestia and her hearths flashed into her mind. “No one gets to tell you when or how to burn, and no one gets to throw water on you.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“I also teach fire safety.”

Acteon chortled. He rubbed a hint of peacock blue bristle sprouting on his neck. “So, no spark yet?”

Aphrodite was about to say “No”. Then a ray of sunlight streaked across Acteon’s glasses and left the reflection of a cluster of bright orange flowers in its wake. The memory of Hera’s gorgeous gardener bloomed in her mind. Her tongue was suddenly tingling with his curry powder desire. She realised she’d taken too long to speak.

“Well?” Acteon pressed, his sharp teeth showing. 

Aphrodite fixed her face into her most charming smile, dripping with sarcasm. “You mean apart from the spark between us?”

Acteon made a hacking noise in his throat, like he’d swallowed a bug, and pushed his glasses up his nose, clicking his pen furiously. Aphrodite grinned and swept past him, sneaking her senses open just enough for a satisfying snack on his embarrassment. She strutted away, leaving him to his scribbling. 

She wandered through the party, nodding courteously to other guests, but staying on the move, trying not to get dragged into conversation. Memories of her first and last visit to an Olympus party nettled her. She felt like she’d just walked through a swamp and come out covered in leeches. Apollo’s twisted attraction, Athena’s impenetrability, Acteon’s assumptions and intrusions and general air of the butterfly catcher, not to mention the miasma of confused wants and bitternesses thick in the air. It all sucked her blood and made her tired and itchy. Her chest tightened. She massaged over her heart and swallowed, trying to breathe deeper. The sun beat down brutally, stifling her. She normally liked the heat, but today it felt oppressive. She wished desperately Amphitrite and Poseidon were here. Poseidon had texted her that morning to say Triton’s sitter had cancelled. It had left her off balance. She dipped into the dainty, peach bag hanging on her shoulder and took out her phone. She flipped it open and brought up the photo he’d sent her of he and Trite's forearms side by side. They had both got new tattoos on the insides of their wrists, silhouette sea creatures in abstract patterns. Poseidon’s was a lobster, with curling letters inked alongside the tail,  _ You’re clawsome!  _ Amphitrite’s was a shell,  _ You’re clamazing!  _ fanning across the top.

_ Me: I can’t tell if that’s adorable or embarrassing. _

_ Poseidon: We were going for embarrassing. _

_ Me: Dorks <3 _

Her heart squeezed. Theirs was the kind of love she wanted to create everywhere, the inspiration for expanding her work, trusting and fun-loving and passionate, friends as much as lovers, lovers as much as ancient spouses. 

Hera’s clipped voice interrupted her thoughts. “Aphrodite, there’s someone I’d like to introduce you to.” 

Aphrodite snapped her phone shut and stuffed it in her bag, turning to see the golden queen with an equally golden companion at her side. He dwarfed Hera with his impressive height and build, enclosed in a navy blue, military uniform, sunbeams ricocheting blindingly off a small medal pinned to his chest. He was looking intensely at Aphrodite with a carnelian gaze, glimmering with something between awkwardness and trouble-maker amusement. Aphrodite’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. It was…

“This is my son, Ares.”

“Your…” Aphrodite echoed faintly, images of an afternoon encounter stampeding across her vision. “Your… son…”

“Mmhm,” Hera said with a smile. “My favourite man. I think he must be the last person for you to meet.”

Ares, as he apparently was, had his hands behind his back in a straight “at ease” position, as if he was being presented by his commanding officer. His head bowed to meet Aphrodite’s stunned stare, his lips curling and his fringe kissing his eyes rakishly. Ares. The prince. The first royal son. The new God of War. Well, that was some first impression she’d made.

“Good to meet you,” she said hoarsely, holding out her hand.

Ares smiled, those devilish eyes like bonfires. He slipped one hand from behind his back and took hers gallantly. His touch was so warm it ran into her bloodstream. His large hand covered hers entirely, smothering her in the memory of the scorching press of his body. She felt like a mouse coiled in the tail of a cobra. She couldn’t stop staring into his burning eyes. Their hands moved up and down once in a slow shake. She took a slightly shuddering breath, her chest compressed by her tight dress. He breathed too. There it was, curry powder. Gods, she was hungry, why had she let that reporter take her away from the food before she’d eaten?

“Good to meet you too.” Ares’ voice was like the hum of a roaring furnace.

Aphrodite's mouth watered. She swallowed, taking her hand away and raising her chin with grace. “Welcome home.”

Ares’ grin rose up more on one side than the other. It was… distracting. He looked so damn cocky, he knew he’d shocked her.

Another deep voice interrupted them, quietly asking for Hera. Aphrodite tore her eyes from Ares to see Hades stood like a gravestone at the queen’s side, his eyes mournful blue, a cigarette between his straight teeth. The King of the Underworld glanced at her with a studied, grim blankness. She inclined her head at him. He nodded back. She’d interacted very little with Hades across the centuries they’d known each other. He’d always been wary of her and never explained why. As a fertility goddess, she’d never much missed his company. 

“Uncle Hades!” Ares said jovially. “Glad you could make it. Bees, huh? Brilliant little bastards.”

Hades looked flatly at his nephew. “They’re quite something.” His cigarette smoke wisped into his cappuccino foam hair. “Good job this last few months.”

“Thanks!” Ares gnashed his teeth into a grin. 

Hades took his cigarette from his mouth, smoke streaming out of his prominent nose. He looked to Hera. “Want a drink? You look over-hostessed.”

Hera fluttered her eyelids in unguarded relief, speaking in a low voice. “Drink, yes. Smoke, yes.”

“Happy to oblige.” 

Hades put the cigarette between his teeth and reached into his jacket. He withdrew a silver cigarette holder. He snapped it open, plucked one out, and held it out to Hera. She took it from him with a grateful noise. Their fingertips brushed. Aphrodite was pierced with an intense, secretive need, like the rapid sawing of a bow on a cello. She almost gasped and held her breath. 

_ That’s interesting. _

Hera put the cigarette into her pursed lips. Hades reached into his jacket again and withdrew a silver lighter. Hera leaned into his hand, the leap of flame reflected in her dark pupils. The lighter chinked closed. The two of them took a long drag and breathed a river of smoke around them in perfect sync. Ares sniffed and wrinkled his nose. Aphrodite glanced at him, but was pulled back to Hera and Hades. They seemed to be having this whole interaction completely in private. It was like they’d dropped out of the garden into some other reality that only they occupied. Their eyes kept meeting, their expressions never changing, but that piercing sensation driving deeper and deeper into Aphrodite’s senses. 

Hades nodded his head towards the tower of champagne glasses. Hera nodded and turned back to her son with a slightly hasty look. “I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.” She and Hades walked off together in an unmistakable shared rhythm, not touching, but much closer than was simply friendly. 

Aphrodite smirked.  _ Full of surprises, Goddess of Marriage.  _ She resisted the urge to join the trails of smoke behind them into the shape of a heart over their heads. The piercing feeling receded, leaving her a little light-headed. The wafting of Ares’ square hand brought her back to earth.

“Wish she’d cut back,” he grumbled.

Aphrodite rounded on him and fixed him with an accusing glare, fighting very hard not to smile through it. “You tricked me.”

Ares let out an indignant laugh, face opening out like a tiger lily in surprise. “ _ I  _ tricked  _ you _ ?”

“You never said you were the prince!”

“You didn’t want small talk.” He pointed out, folding his arms to frame his broad chest.

“Being a prince is not a small deal.” Aphrodite said through her teeth, stomach fluttering.

“Neither is being the hottest gossip on Olympus.” Ares snorted. “I thought you were some girl interviewing for attending on Ma.”

Aphrodite snorted back. “Well, I thought you were the gardener.”

Ares barked a laugh, cracking the humidity. “Why?”

She spread her hands. “I didn’t know Hera’s son was home.”

He shrugged defensively. “I didn’t know a new goddess was in town. Especially not the Goddess of Love.” His voice dropped to a low rumble. “No wonder I was so easy.”

She let out the smile she’d been trying to contain and caught his eye playfully. “I’m pretty sure you are exactly that easy, as standard.”

He smiled back, a fiery flicker in his eyes. He cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, but don't take credit away from yourself, you did a good job on that seduction.”

She tingled, but drew herself up haughtily. “Maybe you were the one seducing me.”

He shook his head, chuckling like embers. “I don't think so, Flower Girl.”

Aphrodite’s whole body was dancing constantly on the edge of giggles. She put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes theatrically. “Oh, so you think you're so irresistible, that I saw you in a heap on the grass and just had to have you that second?”

He gave her the most wonderfully infuriating grin. “I mean, you can't win. Either it's that or the second I started talking to you, you melted like butter.”

She opened her mouth to retort. Then realised the sense in what he’d just said. She pursed her lips. “Fuck.”

“Yep.”

“You're right.”

“It's been known to happen.”

She let one of the brewing giggles out. “Often?”

“That's not important.”

She giggled again. Gods, she could hear herself sounding like a piano that a kitten was running across, her voice skipping and light and tuneless. She couldn’t tell if her face was flushed or if that was just the heat coming off his body, more than from the sun. She sucked her lower lip into her mouth and drummed her fingers on her hips.

_ Come on, be normal. So you accidentally threw yourself at royalty? The king has so many fucking descendants, it’s not like it means a whole lot up here. Just flirt like a normal person. Should I flirt? Is that a good idea? Eh, fuck it, he’s cute. _

She took a step towards him, into that pulsing heatwave, and pushed her voice an octave lower, smoky and smart. “Well, you're in the same boat. Same lose-lose for you.”

He mirrored her, ducking closer to her and murmuring with a conspiratorial lilt that thrummed down her spine. “Aphrodite, there isn't a possible version of our meeting where I don't come out feeling like I won something.”

She smiled.

He smiled.

She could smell his cologne, oaky and brisk. She glanced at his restless mouth. She sucked on her tongue. Someone walked behind her and she was reminded of the web of gossip and politics around them. And of Acteon’s big, boxy camera. She straightened up and glanced about her. No one was nearby and she couldn’t see the reporter. She turned back to him, looking up into his face, which had turned expectant, oddly soft for how hard his features were. 

“Hey, um, did you… tell anyone about it?” she asked tentatively.

Ares looked a little apologetic and rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, so I might possibly have humble bragged to my sister.” He brought his hand down in a dismissive flap. “But she's boring, she won't tell anyone.”

Aphrodite loosened again. “OK.” She remembered Acteon’s clinging sensation and rubbed her arms.

“You cold?” Ares asked, making a motion towards his jacket buttons.

Aphrodite warmed, that was sweet and sort of unexpected. She shook her head. “You kidding? I’m melting.”

“Yeah, how do you think it feels being in this thing?”

She eyed his uniform, he looked much less rugged in it; classically handsome, the kind of upright man that she liked to unravel. “You don’t like it?”

“Ma made me wear it.”

“She making you tell the story behind the medal?” She resisted strumming along his chest to flick the bronze disc.

He laughed softly at the grass with a sudden bashfulness that made the pit of her stomach pulse. “I don’t know what it’s for. I don't mean that modestly. I mean I literally haven't had it explained.”

She stopped resisting and tickled the medal, a hard beat of his heart sending an electrical zap down her finger. She beamed at him.

He bit his lip, teeth glinting. “So, does that mean I’m your dirty, little secret now? Because I have no problem with that.”

She faltered, withdrawing her hand. “No, I…” She what? Why didn’t she want anyone to know? Why shouldn’t she? Since when had she ever worried about people knowing that kind of stuff? Olympus must be rubbing off on her. Well, that wasn’t OK, not when she’d come here to rub off on Olympus. She put her hands back on her hips and looked up at him with careless defiance. “No. You know what? Doesn't matter. Tell anyone you want.”

Ares looked curious and amused. His hands slid into his pockets, his body going into a slouch that emphasised his figure. “Well, I don't have a mailing list or anything. In fact, with my number of buddies, we've probably pretty much exhausted the rumour mill.” His eyes zipped around her, glimmering. “But, hey, it's cool you're not worried about keeping it hush hush.” He glanced away and back, speaking casually. “Like, what's wrong with two adults having a little fun, right? Why do we make people feel like they gotta keep that in the closet with the other skeletons?”

A weight lifted off Aphrodite’s shoulders. She looked at Ares with pleasant surprise, her smile spilling over and her brow smoothing. “Exactly! I'm glad you see it that way.”

He smiled a little quizzically. She kept smiling back. The giggles and the tingles and the heat dissipated. She found herself just wanting to talk to him. She was relaxing into his voice and his manner and the way the sun soaked into his vanilla curls. The harp music turned slow and dreamy.

“So, you were away a long time, huh?” she said in an open, inviting tone.

Ares laughed a little bitterly, seeming relaxed as well. “It flew by.”

“Not happy to be home?” 

“Culture shock, I guess.” He looked past her to the party guests, milling about and conversing in dull tones.

She missed his gaze, she leaned to slip into it. “Get back to any big changes you're excited about?”

His eyes roved to her, rested on her meaningfully, and smouldered ruby. “One.”

Her abdomen wriggled. She ached sweetly between her thighs. She lapped the taste of curry powder greedily in her mouth. 

He bit his lip again.

“Ares! Welcome home!” Hecate burst into the conversation, like a comet, colliding with Ares and slinging her arm around him. She was easily as tall as him, the pair reminding Aphrodite of a solar eclipse. Ares’ pulsing heat receded, leaving a disappointed cool in Aphrodite’s body. 

“Damn!” Hecate continued cheerfully. “Does that mean the Underworld’s looking at a slow summer? We did a roaring trade while you were on campaign.”

Aphrodite caught Ares’ guilty glance at her. It seemed that wasn’t a side of his work he was keen on sharing with her. “Not that roaring…” he said, more to her than to Hecate.

Hecate clapped his shoulder. “Are you kidding? Double shifts all round! In fact, I was going to ask if I could talk numbers with you.”

Ares looked reluctantly at Hecate. Her sharp teeth were bared eagerly, like a shark that really likes math. He flattened his mouth defeatedly. “Uh, sure.” 

Aphrodite’s heart bobbed an inch lower, as Hecate flashed her a grin, then started to steer Ares away. He twisted in Hecate's grasp and shot Aphrodite an almost pleading look, mouthing, “Don't go anywhere.” Her heart bobbed back up. She shrugged coyly. He grinned wryly and disappeared into the crowd.

She watched him go, her fingers floating to her lips and running along them thoughtfully. So, her gardener was the prince. And the prince was… Kinda nice. Really kinda nice. After an afternoon of her senses crowding with uncomfortable energies, Ares had felt… Yeah. Really nice. She was just starting to unpick the specifics, when cigarette smoke nudged her curiosity. She glanced over to a nearby palm tree and saw Hades and Hera leaning against it, speaking with intense eye contact. Hades looked around to where Zeus was chugging a beer with Apollo. He turned back to Hera and dusted his fingertips over her hip.

Olympus was going to be interesting.

She glanced back at Zeus and saw Apollo had been replaced by Demeter. The statuesque Goddess of the Harvest was leaning away, her mouth tight and eyes wary, as Zeus leered down at her. Aphrodite frowned. In the space between Demeter and herself, a nymph waiter was passing with a tray of champagne glasses, stained sweet pink by the hibiscus flowers soaking in the liquid. Aphrodite took off at a saunter, arriving elegantly in earshot and plucking a glass from the waiter with a smile. She carefully fixed her eyes on the tiny bubbles fizzing from the wilting flower and pricked up her ears. 

Zeus' oily, pouty voice slithered to her through the hum of the harp. "Why don't you let me visit you anymore?" 

Demeter's reply was terse and muted. "I never did, you always just showed up uninvited."

"Depends what you count as an invite." An extra dollop of oil stirred into Zeus' voice. 

Aphrodite barely lifted the lid on her senses and was clawed by Demeter's disgust. Aside from his usual fog of sullen want, Zeus didn't seem to have a great deal of real desire directed at his target. He was just chasing a power buzz. Gross. Aphrodite ground her teeth. She chased the waiter again and retrieved a second glass, then strode purposefully over to the pair, just as Zeus slid forward another inch. 

"Demeter, here's your drink!" she announced briskly, tucking her body snugly in Zeus' way and pressing the champagne into Demeter's hand. "Sorry it took me so long, I think that waiter has jet skis for shoes!" 

Demeter looked confused, but her mouth twitched in a smile. "Thanks."

Something barbed poked Aphrodite from Zeus' aura. She zipped herself shut again and gave him a bright, forceful look. 

Zeus' jaw hardened, then slackened. "None for me?" he said in his snarling, saxophone voice. 

"You just showed up," Aphrodite replied, with icy innocence. "Got to ask nicely, I'm afraid, if you want something."

Zeus' lips twisted. "Even if you're the king?" 

"Especially if you're the king."

Zeus grinned like a crescent moon over a roadside robbery. "I didn't get to be king by waiting for gifts and permissions."

Aphrodite took a slow, unimpressed sip of flower-syrup champagne. "But it's not much of a kingdom where those things don't matter."

Zeus' smile rotted off his face. 

Demeter shifted her weight, fingers wrapping around her glass. Aphrodite held his gaze coolly. When she spoke again it was breezy, but unyielding. "But king you are, so are you making a speech?" 

Zeus looked taken aback. "Whatever about?" 

Aphrodite shrugged. "Bees, I suppose. Or something sweet about your wife and children. Your son's only just home, isn't he?" 

Zeus' angular shoulder stiffened under his garish, Hawaiian shirt. "Yes," he grunted. "But we're not making a fuss."

Aphrodite thought of Ares' shiftiness when Hecate praised him and his confusion at his own medal. She pursed her lips. "Pity. He seems nice."

"Well, you haven't known him long, have you?" Zeus said with a smile that left his eyes dead as coal. 

Aphrodite prickled and glared. 

"Anyway," Zeus said with a slight note of triumph. "It's just peachy to see you back at our little get togethers, Aphrodite. You know, after last time."

Aphrodite went cold. Her stomach filled with lead and her throat closed. She faced Zeus' sneer with a murderous calm. He held her eye, his smile not budging. 

He broke her gaze with a toss of his hair like a show pony. "I'll go and see if I can hunt down some of that champagne I missed out on. Nice to see you, ladies." He strode away, the pattern on his shirt blurring into the tropical foliage. 

Aphrodite snarled under breath, her stilettos punishing the grass as she forced a tremble of rage out of her body and into the earth. She felt Demeter exhale beside her. They turned to each other. 

"Thank you," Demeter said sincerely. 

Aphrodite slouched, her hip jutting and one shoulder bunching up. She clinked her glass against Demeter's and they drank in unison. "No sweat," she said, swallowing. "My douchebag radar was going bananas."

Demeter raised an eyebrow. "Colourful phrasing." 

"I'm a rainbow, alright." Aphrodite glugged again, the rich, berry tang of the hibiscus bubbles fizzing on her tongue. 

"Look, I don't mean to be rude," Demeter said apologetically. "But I was actually on my way to the powder room when Zeus cornered me."

Aphrodite waved her off, "Powder away." 

"Right." Demeter eyed her a moment, her crop green eyes still and pensive. Then she blinked and tipped her glass. "Thanks again."

"Anytime."

Demeter walked away without a backwards glance. Aphrodite searched the party, trying to clear her senses of Zeus and the spiky burst of memories he’d prodded awake. She leaned into the soothing music, rippling like a pond full of carp, and the gum of hibiscus on her lips. She found her eye fixating on spots of yellow, her heart skipping a beat every time she thought she'd spotted… 

"I saw you talking to Demeter." 

She jumped out of her skin, her drink spitting on her knuckles. She wheeled around to see Hestia in a ballooning, orange dress that made her look like an angry grapefruit, hands on her bowl hips, eyes amber with accusatory fire. 

Aphrodite grinned like a wolf. She rolled her shoulders and flexed her neck, a combination of annoyance and bitter satisfaction at being annoying scraping her spine like the teeth of a comb. "And?" 

"I hope you weren't trying to dissuade her from joining TGOEM," Hestia said, like a teacher catching a student passing notes. 

Aphrodite drew back incredulously. "You're trying to get your hooks in Demeter? Seriously?" It made no sense, romance was pumping through that woman like gold through rock. 

Hestia sniffed imperiously. "I'll have you know, she came to us. We're exactly the kind of backing she needs out on her own in the Mortal Realm." 

Aphrodite batted her eyes and spoke with needling politeness. "Well, you weren't the one backing her just now, were you? Does TGOEM only look after formal members?"

Hestia's mouth looked like she was eating a whole, unripe satsuma. "We can't be everywhere. That's why we're recruiting." 

Aphrodite threw out a callous, single laugh. "A little presumptuous to be recruiting a fertility goddess, no?" 

Hestia made an aloof gesture, as if delivering an argument in a forum debate. The music flurried with her. "Can we not turn away from what we were born? Why should that define her?" 

Aphrodite wrinkled her nose. Fair point. Fuck. She knocked back a swig of champagne. It grazed her tongue. "Well, for your information, I wasn't trying to dissuade her of anything. Only one of us is in the business of limiting choice."

Hestia laughed through her nose. "Oh, yes, that old cherry. 'It's not wantonness, it's free will', meanwhile the realms eat themselves alive chasing false hopes and fleeting desires."

"At least something eating itself alive is eating at all, and not starving to death trying to prove to the world it can go without food," Aphrodite spat. 

Hestia's nostrils flared. "At least something proving to the world it can go without food isn't proving to the world it will eat anything, gobbling up rot and poison while the world laughs."

"Well!" Aphrodite began with zeal, gin and fizz and too many frustrating encounters swilling and biting in her brain. "At least… At least… At least I know to abandon the metaphor while it’s getting out of hand!" 

Hestia laughed like a snooty St Bernard. "New territory for you, I imagine, recognising when something has got out of hand."

The harp picked up its tempo, the shrill plucking cantering on Aphrodite's skin and jabbing her hackles up. "I recognise it fine, I just don't slap the label on every scrap of fun like a nasty nurse in a horror movie."

"At least the nurse survives to the end. You know who's always first to go? The tart."

Aphrodite let out a high cackle, her blood boiling. "Yeah, they've got to stop the interesting one stealing the show."

"Oh, for constellations' sake.” Hestia groaned in profound exasperation and made an enormous show of rolling her eyes. She took a deep, hefting breath and brought her palms together in front of her, like a pious devout. “This is such a pointless conversation." She speared Aphrodite with a stern glare. "Just, please respect Demeter's wishes and leave her alone."

"I will, if she asks." Aphrodite replied through her teeth. 

Hestia’s full lips crumpled. "Fine."

"Fine."

"Fine."

The hearth goddess puffed a cloud of steam out of her broad nose and marched away, to the beat of the quick, tepid music.

Aphrodite watched her go, her skin searing as the stressed anger coursed through her. Her senses spun haywire, the chaos of desires and demands in the crush of bodies exploding in her like grenades. She reeled. She clutched her churning stomach and stuffed her nose in her glass and snorted the sweet scent like cocaine. 

_ OK, cool it, seriously. You can do this. It's not going to be like last time. Breathe. Focus on the flower. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.  _

_ Gods, I hope nobody notices.  _

*

In the hum of bees and chatter and the sigh of harp song and the fruity, island scents of tropical flowers, Ares noticed something. 

It started out as a sprinkle of cinnamon on the tip of his tongue. Then it was a spiced, stinging scent. Then a crackling in his ears. Then a burn on the hairs of his arms, like they were candle wicks. 

Anger.

No.

Wrath.

He made a few mumbled excuses and extracted himself from Hecate. As he turned towards it, he felt like he was stumbling into a drugged fog. His senses clouded with the intensity of it. This wasn’t just everyday anger. This was rage carried in the body for centuries and rising to the surface, like magma. This was titanic.

Aphrodite.

He’d sensed this the day they met, been captivated by it, her eternal, devouring storm under the veneer of her enigmatic ease. He stopped himself, planting his feet in the earth and feeling his heels sink into the soft grass, grounding himself, as the wave of anger threw him out to sea. He lowered his head and closed his eyes. He rolled his tongue behind his teeth. Anger came from many places - protectiveness, principle, pride. This wasn’t those. This was… He tasted again to be sure. Yeah. This was fear. She was afraid. And she was furious about it.

He opened his eyes and scanned the crowd desperately, half drunkenly drawn to her anger, like a wasp to jam, half sharply aware that no one else here could have any idea she was in trouble. Except him. He had to get to her. His eyes darted frantically around the candy store of rainbow faces, scrabbling for her, like he was digging for a diamond in rubble. He tried to focus his senses like Athena had been teaching him, but his powers were so much more chaotic than hers, it was like trying to rein in wild horses. 

A flash of red behind his eyes. A swirl of lavender before them. He found her, just visible on the other side of a fanning dracaena. She had tucked herself back from the crowd and was standing straight as a rod with her arms folded and her wide eyes fixed fiercely on the ground. No one was with her. No one nearby had even noticed. How had nobody noticed? Fucking Olympus. 

He stepped forward without thinking, hurrying towards her, the rest of the guests melting into the foliage and becoming nothing more than blurred, painted scenery between him and the blinding, beautiful lantern of Aphrodite’s anger. 

“Friends!” 

Ares stopped in his tracks, the boom of his father’s voice like a shot to the navel. He set his jaw and turned to see Zeus stood in front of the tower of champagne glasses, framed by their glittering, gilded light, and raising a glass to the crowd, who now all fell silent and faced him. The music died. Ares couldn’t get to her now without attracting too much attention. He snarled in his throat, folded his arms tight and glared towards his father.

“You know I always love to see you all in my home!” Zeus announced jovially, his voice projected across the garden and echoing, as if in a grand, marble hall. “Drinking my alcohol, eating my food. It warms my heart. When are you leaving again?” He grinned and a light titter fluttered through the guests. “I jest, I jest.” He waved off the non-laugh, as if it needed quietening down, and paused a second to fix his face into something warm and charming. He continued in a velvet tone, bringing his glass closer to his body and cupping it with both hands. "You know, I often think of Olympus as a colony of bees. We're drawn to beauty. We can't help it. It's our life essence.” His voice drifted a little, almost wistfully. His eyes drifted too, in a direction Ares couldn’t quite track, but it looked like he was addressing someone specific in the crowd. “All the beauty of creation is at our fingertips.” 

Ares squinted and followed his eyes. Followed them to… _ Oh no. _ Ares was wrapped in _her_ thread of anger. It coiled on every part of him and bound him tight. His cock twitched. His spine slinked. He swallowed hard and pulled himself out of the daze. 

Zeus’ voice simmered lower and snaked through the oblivious guests to Aphrodite, who met his eyes with a venomous stare. “We  _ take  _ beauty and we  _ turn  _ it into sweetness and power. We all have a role, we all work hard and work together, and it surrounds us in golden prosperity. And if you don't belong in the hive, if you don't make honey…” He lifted his glass towards her. “You get stung." 

An uncertain pause. A few guests exchanged glances, wondering if the speech was over, as Zeus looked steadily over their heads to some point in the back, his lips frozen in an unshakeable, triumphant smile. 

Aphrodite’s anger gushed into Ares, it pressed on his heart and filled his mouth. His own anger splashed into it, boiling in his gut. What the fuck was Zeus doing? Why was he going after her like that? Couldn’t he feel it? Couldn’t everyone feel it? In all the realms? She was so angry. She was so frightened. She was in so much pain. Belong in the fucking colony? The woman was a hornets nest all on her own. And Olympus, and Zeus, had kicked it hard. His heart began to pound. The nerve of the guy. He had no right. No fucking right. How dare he stand there and smile and…

“To the colony!”

“To the colony!” The crowd echoed Zeus’ bold finish and drank in unison, a smattering of applause and chatter following. Zeus’ voice rode the merry wave. He broke his gaze on Aphrodite and turned to Hera. Ares saw her through his red-rimming vision, standing with Hades not far from his father. 

“And of course, what's a beehive without its queen?” Zeus chuckled. “Get up here, Bunny." 

Ares’ fingernails stuck into his palms, as Hera’s jagged frustration grazed him. Her mouth tightened, but she glanced at the crowd and pushed a gracious smile onto her lips. She walked stiffly to Zeus. He beamed, as she came into arms length, reached out with his free hand, snared her waist, scooped her close, and dipped her in a flamboyant kiss. 

Her anger sliced Ares down the middle. His stomach lurched and he lurched with it, almost charging forward to wrench his father off her and throw him into a tree. Hera drooped in Zeus' embrace, letting his mouth move on hers and laying a palm limply to his cheek to conceal her lack of engagement to the crowd. Another bolt hit Ares from Aphrodite. He wheeled to look at her and saw her glowering at the unwanted kiss in revulsion.    


With the sound of glue peeling off foam, Zeus unsealed himself from Hera and grinned out to the crowd to a ruckus of mocking, affectionate applause. Hera smiled like she was sucking a lemon wedge, and waved to them all. She patted Zeus’ chest and peeled away. He didn’t watch her go. He gave the crowd a final showy grin, then gestured for them all to continue, and ambled off towards the greenhouse, head held high. Ares stared after him, the rising rage vibrating in his body, his biceps straining the seams of his jacket, his temples aching with the clenching of his jaw. A small, sensible, Athena-pitched voice in the back of his mind told him to drop it. He stamped on the voice like an ant, and marched after his father, his footprints leaving black scorch marks in the grass.

He rounded the greenhouse, vanishing from the party and arriving in a soft, shimmering quiet. Zeus was leaning against the wall, the glare from the glass shooting around him and emphasising his stature. He was smoking a cigarette, his hair falling loosely over one side of his face, back to its sour pensiveness, now he was out of the spotlight. 

He looked up disinterestedly, as Ares flung himself around the corner and stood a few feet off, glowering like a stove. 

"Oh. Hey, Kid. I'm just having a breather, be out in a minute." He looked away from Ares and dragged on the cigarette. 

Ares took his hands out of his pockets, still clenched. He spoke with trembling control, his body roasting in his heavy jacket. "What the fuck was that?" 

Zeus looked up again, nonplussed. "What?" 

"What?" Ares scoffed. "Picking on the new girl with that fucked up bee speech!" 

"Oh." Zeus shrugged. "That." 

A plume of smoke gusted towards Ares and irritated his throat. The hairs on the back of his neck turned to needles. "You're not even gonna deny it?" 

"No." Zeus clucked his tongue, head lolling to knock on the glass. He gazed with a bored expression out over this untidier part of the garden, all crawling ground ivy and bellflower clusters. "Like you said, new girl. She needs to learn her place."

"Her place?" Ares' voice brewed hotter, steam on his tongue. "You're such a fucking creep!" 

"She’s a liability."

"You don't know a damn thing about her!" 

Zeus' face etched. He moved his dark, deep-space eyes to Ares. "More than you do."

Ares made a sound of derision, like gears grinding. He squared his shoulders, shaping himself like a shield. "What's it gonna take for you to give the women of Olympus a break?" 

Zeus shot him an ugly smirk. "Why do you care? Trying to be hero? You've had six months of that and didn't make it."

Ares felt a twinge in his chest. He tensed his torso, hardening himself against it. 

"So you like her, huh?" Zeus continued with greasy amusement. "I wouldn't put too many eggs in that basketcase, Son. She's a special kind of nightmare."

Ares' blood coursed hot.

"And she wouldn't go for you anyway. She doesn't use blunt instruments."

Ares' blood coursed cold. He shook himself and plunged into his anger to keep himself from shrinking back. Zeus blew a torrent of smoke into the haze cloaking the glass. He looked like a mirage. 

Ares took a solid step into the acrid scent, growling through his teeth like a jaguar. "This has nothing to do with anything like that. Don't put everyone else in your terms. This has to do with my dad making a fucking spectacle."

Zeus scoffed and waved his cigarette dismissively, leaving a thin signature in the air. "Oh please, I am a spectacle, nothing I can do about it."

"Except not use your attention to fuck with people!" Ares barked. "Like what was that thing with Ma? You know she hates that kind of display!" 

Zeus cast his hands up. "It was romantic!" 

"Not for her!" 

Zeus groaned and scrunched his hair on top of his head and let it fall, the ends glinting with electricity. "Your mother needs to lighten up."

Ares noticed the lightning and his throat tightened, but he ploughed on. "Maybe she would, if she wasn't having to babysit you 24/7!"

Zeus rolled to lean one shoulder on the greenhouse and faced Ares, the flare of sun on glass lighting his hard pupils, the wild green behind him looking eldritch. "Well, you're home now, so she can babysit some other loser."

Ares snarled to the sky, his words stringing out of him in a frustrated drone. "How are you this much of a tool?" He rolled his shoulders and locked them square again. He cracked his neck. His pushed his voice low and finite. "Just back off Aphrodite and give Ma some space, and I'll leave you alone. Yeah?" 

Zeus narrowed his eyes, smoke wending around his face. "You're off the battlefield now, Kid. You don't give the orders." 

Ares' nerve endings spat like soldering metal, lancing his composure. "As if anyone can have a minute off the fucking battlefield with you making everything a fight!" 

Zeus snapped up straight, white sparks in his irises. "Oh, I'm the one who makes everything a fight? What are you doing literally right now, Ares? I'll tell you what, the only thing you're fucking good for, going round picking everyone else's scabs. We were all hoping going on that trip might burn off some of your toxic waste, but looks like you've come back as radioactive as ever. It's so damn tiring, you know? The paranoia, the flying off the handle, the hero syndrome, the public dramas." 

Ares' chest twinged again. "Shut up."

"It exhausts your mother, poor woman."

"Don't bring her into this."

"You brought her into it! You always do! And now Aphrodite too!" Zeus ran his hand despairingly through his hair. "Fates, Son, you have to tone it down. You're in the public eye now, we can't be doing with this volatility."

"I…" An old ache was nudging at Ares' heart. He gathered his anger around him in a protective cloak and forced his voice deep. "I am not volatile." 

Zeus sighed heavily, ruffling the printed petals on his shirt. He sucked on the cigarette and spoke with a strange regret. "You are. And I'll tell you something: no one will ever put up with it like I do. I get it. I mean, I know you better than you know yourself. I know it's just a toddler tantrum.” He looked up with pity. “But you put on a good show. To someone else it will be too much to handle. Crazy Ares. Violent Ares."

"I'm not violent!" 

"A good few hundred dead mortals might disagree."

"Th-that was work!" Ares was starting to shake, he could feel it in his dense muscles. He tensed himself to oak to stand his ground. "No one but you accuses me of that!" 

Zeus gave him a sickeningly sympathetic look. "Not to your face. But it's Olympus, Ares, people talk. People speculate. She's been wondering, I'm sure, your little love goddess. What kind of guy does it take to be a war god? What flavour of fucked up does he have to be?" 

"You gave me this job!" 

Zeus regarded him through a stream of lazy smoke. "Yeah. But you really took to it, didn't you?" 

Ares halted. His heart hammered painfully in his rib cage. His blood pounded and hissed with scratching heat. He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He had taken to it. He'd enjoyed it. Fates, what did that make him? He didn't want to ask that, but the question suddenly rattled in his mind so loudly that he couldn't find his anger, couldn't find his defences. He stood, dumb as a scarecrow, a tremor audible in his breathing.  He glared at his father furiously.  Zeus watched his face a moment, then sneered and wandered away. Ares flinched at the last crackle of lightning in the tips of his hair.  He vanished around the greenhouse. 

Ares stood, nauseous and stinging, in the echo of… whatever that was. He hadn't successfully defended Aphrodite. He hadn't stuck up for Ma. Was Ma tired of him?  _ No, come on, he'll just be saying that. That's what he does. He says stuff. He lies and he twists things. And he doesn't know anything about anyone, especially me, so he's just guessing what people say and think. Aphrodite might be fine with war, she might not have given it a second thought.  _ But what if she had? What if everyone had? Was that what they were all thinking? Crazy Ares? Had he overreacted following Zeus over here? Was he just trying to be a hero?  _ No! Fates, stop letting him get in your head!  _ But what if... _Stop it!_

His heart pounded.

_"I know you better than you know yourself."_

_ I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I’m…  _

His fist burst with pain. 

It shocked him back to the garden. He blinked down at his smarting knuckles. Then saw the spider web of fractures in the nearest greenhouse panel. 

He'd punched the glass. 

“Shit. Shit, fuck, shit.”

He heaved a steadying breath and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. The echo of anger and confusion throbbed in his ears. 

_ I’m not crazy… _

*

_ I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy… _

_ “Trite, what were you doing bringing her here? She’s totally losing it.” _

_ “Who’s the crazy ocean girl? Fates, did you see how she went off?” _

_ “Poseidon’s always been the too-nice brother, must be Tartarus living with that powder keg.” _

“That felt directed.”  A needling voice wrenched Aphrodite from her skidding thoughts. Her hammering heart leaped into her throat and she whirled around to see Acteon peering up at her, his beady eyes magnified by his thick, square glasses. 

“Pardon?” she asked breathlessly.

“That speech from the king. It felt directed.” He looked at her pointedly.

The look in Zeus’ eyes sizzled on Aphrodite’s brain. The same look a poker dealer gives a gambler with nothing left but their watch and bus ticket. Her skin crawled, her nerves burned. She looked sharply down at Acteon, her eyes flooding with amethyst flames. 

Acteon swallowed and shrank. 

She pierced him with her glare. “Go buzz around some other flower.”

She stalked off, feeling his popping eyes on her back, like ice cubes. The party grumbled around her. Centuries of hurt and want, hurt and want, stinging her all over, like they’d saved a few too many bees, dunked her in honey, and let them all loose. She stumbled across the garden, every sense both heightened and dampened, picking up every motion, every whisper, every scent, and totally unable to rationalise them in her mind. Eyes. Eyes were everywhere. People were staring. Everyone was always staring at her. Wanting her. Wanting her gone. Wanting. Wanting. Wanting. That’s all anyone here ever did. It wrapped her in layers and layers of building pressure, mummifying her, suffocating her.

“Wow, Hestia, claws are out today.” Artemis’ brash voice caught her ear. 

"I'm just saying,” Hestia’s theatrical innocence. “How much can someone really experience love, let alone rule it, if they put it about so freely?" 

Fire lashed her stomach. 

“Hestia, stop!” Athena’s placid voice was almost unrecognisable in its sudden harshness. “That’s beneath you.”

The sour lemon flavour of a lovers’ spat filled her mouth. She coughed and gasped. The harp was playing something rapid, pummelling her heart faster and faster.

She marched on, seeing a gleam of sunlight away from the crowd and racing towards it, using all her strength not to break into a run.

“Come on, Man, quit holding out on me!” Apollo’s clawing tone rang in her skull.

“Dite’s not your type, Dude, trust me.” Hermes’ familiar voice.

“Why? What’s wrong with her?”

Hermes scoffed. “Assertiveness, experience, temper, all the stuff you hate in women.”

Athena and Hestia’s sour citrus frothed into Apollo’s bitter taste. She felt sick. Her stomach heaved.

“Maybe she just needs the right man.”

Another snort. “Maybe you just need the right slap in the face.”

Apollo’s poison fizzed on her tongue. She skidded around a palm tree and saw the two young gods talking. Apollo had his back to her. Hermes’ eyes widened on her. She couldn’t let him see her like this. She gagged and thoughtlessly spun on her stiletto and fled. Another palm tree and she was enough out of sight to run. Her knees buckled, she launched into a dash, almost pitching forward as her heels caught in the soil. The rainbow flashes of the party kept peeking behind plants. She was too close. Her body was still so horribly full of noise. She ran towards the gleam of sunlight on the greenhouse, towards that big block of green that would conceal her from all those eyes. So many eyes.

She almost lost her balance, as she reached the greenhouse, tipping against the warm, smooth glass and planting her side against it. She poured her focus into the rush of heat on her skin. She managed one steadying breath, then gasped, as she realised with a thump of her heart that she wasn’t alone. She looked up. Ares was whipping round to face her. It seemed, from the mark on his forehead, that he’d had his brow pressed to the glass. The look in his eye was of a hunted stag. Same as her, she imagined.

For a stilted moment, they stood staring at each other, mouths open, eyes wide.

The distant flutter of harp music.

The hum of a newly safe bee.

The clamour in Aphrodite’s body weakly fizzled out, leaving her raw and trembling. She crossed her arms tight over her chest to compress the shivers, and tossed her head up merrily. “Hey! You get overheated too?”

Ares gaped at Aphrodite. Her face was completely calm, her eyes sparkling and her body still. But she was still dusted with cinnamon, it seemed to be clumping in her aura and going stale. He glanced at her fingers, curled so tight on her arms that they sunk into the flesh like dough. His eyes roved to her elaborate up-do. The frangipani scattered about the lavender coils were singed at the edges of their petals. He frowned. He should have just gone to her. He cursed himself. He shifted his weight to conceal the panel of glass, opaque with cracks.

“Olympus to Ares?” she laughed lightly.

He blinked. “Oh, yeah. Like I said, damn uniform.”

“I can’t breathe in this dress. Way too tight.” 

Ares tried not to look. And failed. The yellow and peach cuddled her close, like sauce poured on a sundae. 

Aphrodite watched his eyes move, then hurry away. It was cute, oddly comforting. She shuffled her feet in the grass. “Having a good time?”

Ares grit his teeth, his voice was easy, but there were sparks in his eyes and his hair looked frazzled. “Honestly? I fucking hate these things.”

A laugh skipped out of her, roughly tearing away some of the tension. “Me too!”

“Seriously?” He half-grinned crookedly. “I figured social butterfly.”

Aphrodite laughed again, bitterly this time. “So did I.”

“But these things suck?”

“These things  suck! ”

They chuckled together, their laughter kicking up the air between them and making Aphrodite light, too light. She’d emptied her body trying to purge it of the noise, now there was nothing to stop her getting high on a pretty smile. She caught Ares’ eye and held it. His eyes were unlike any she’d ever seen. There were no whites. They were just intense pools of fiery red, the glow from them spilling across his face and staining his hard-cut cheeks. It was monstrous. But the good kind. She sucked her lip. Her heart hadn’t slowed yet. His eyes brightened. His hand moved, as if to reach out to her.

The silence broke with the crack of Hermes’ frantic yelp, as he whizzed around the corner of the greenhouse to Aphrodite’s side. She noticed Ares’ cheek twitch, as she turned to the intruder.

“Dite!” Hermes panted, the wings on his shoes flapping urgently. “There you are! Gee, I’m sorry about Apollo, you shouldn’t have had to hear that. He can be such a…” He suddenly froze, like he’d been struck in the face, then shook his head. “Holy Harpies!” His face exploded into a dazzling grin. He looked excitedly between them. “There’s bonkers mischief levels over here, what did I walk in on?”

Aphrodite narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” she mumbled.

Hermes stuck his tongue out at her, then whirled to Ares, flourishing his hands, like he was about to do a card trick. “I can rely on you, Big Guy. What’s cooking?”

Aphrodite followed Hermes’ gaze. Ares was smiling. She hadn’t seen that smile yet, reckless and fanged. He looked at her with it, into her. “Hey.” His voice dropped to the depths of the Underworld and rumbled deliciously in her abdomen. “Wanna do something crazy?”

Sweet, spiced, uncompromised desire trickled into her flesh from Ares and Hermes, striking a chord in her core. She raised her chin coyly, but kept her gaze hot on him. “How crazy?”

He snickered darkly. “Legally grey.”

Her raw body tingled with new sparks. She took a deep breath of the excitement in the air. “Oh Sweet Stars,” she sighed indulgently, “I would love to.”

“Come with me.”

The three of them set off hastily across the grounds, Ares in the lead, striding with his shoulders, tearing the grass with his steps. Hermes gambolled like a pixie, his wings taking him in short bursts, skimming over the ground, his hair breaking free of the tie and streaming like maypole ribbons. Aphrodite tottered, as if drunk, on the high spikes of her shoes, giggling and stepping along their refreshing emotions like a tightrope, trying not to tip back into commotion. 

They skirted the edge of the grand house and arrived at a long garage building with a series of locked doors. Ares marched purposefully to a door painted scarlet. He hooked the handle at the bottom. His sleeve strained over his bicep. He wrenched the door open, shattering the lock and hurling the metal slats to roll up loudly. The sunlight flowed over a startling, cherry red convertible, clean enough to eat off, so sleek and streamlined it looked formed out of blowing wind. 

Hermes laced his fingers behind his head and whistled low. “Nice! Is this baby yours?”

Ares strode into the garage. “Nope. Where’s the fun if it’s mine?”

Hermes grinned. “So…”

“It’s Dad’s. Loves this thing like his own cock.”

Another slightly delirious laugh whisked from Aphrodite. She put her hand to her face to cool it. “But, you have the keys?”

Ares flicked the roof of the car with his unnatural strength and it pinged back, revealing plush, cream, leather seats. He leaned in and ferreted about under the steering wheel. “I got better.” There was a clunk, as he pulled off the steering column cover. “I got the God of Thieves.” He grinned at Hermes.

Hermes cackled and rubbed his palms together, the mischief eddying around him, like foam in a milkshake maker. He flew from the doorway to Ares’ side and ducked to hotwire the car, his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth.

Ares stepped back and fiddled the buttons open on his jacket. He wrestled it away, like it had been pasted to his body with something itchy. His shirt lay close along his broad, sculpted torso, the fine weave just showing the glimmer of his golden skin. Aphrodite cocked her head and appraised him. The tie went next, tossed with the jacket in the back seat. His collar unfolded, the sun sneaked in and kissed his neck. Her cheeks tingled. He looked up at her startlingly, his eyes wild and angry and joyous. His chest rose and fell under his shirt in rapid, half-controlled breaths. 

“Duchess.” His wicked voice stroked the base of her spine. Their gazes met effervescently. He extended his hand. “Your carriage awaits.”

“Where are we going?” she breathed.

His criminal smile lured her, like a lasso. “Anywhere we fucking want.”


	5. “Fall in love today, Olympus!”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Escaping the pressures of a royal party, Ares, Aphrodite and Hermes steal Zeus' convertible and go for a ride around the city. Ares and Aphrodite grow closer.
> 
> [CW: Super mild drug use. And it's Hermes, so are we even surprised.]
> 
> Song, Part 1: [Shut Up and Drive, Rihanna](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up7pvPqNkuU)  
> Song, Part 2: [Oh Yeah, Roxy Music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGftnl0KtUY)

The convertible roared to life and leaped from the garage, like a pouncing lion. Ares launched it forward with such a stamp on the pedal that his foot almost went through the floor. The wheels left the ground and banged back onto it with an invigorating jolt up Aphrodite's spine, an explosion of butterflies in her stomach. She squealed in excitement, her voice harmonising with the snarl of the engine. Hermes hooted and spread himself out along the back seats. Ares laughed, his heat pulsating against Aphrodite’s bare arm in the passenger seat. The car pelted into the white blaze of the sun.

They zoomed down the winding road through the royal grounds, spinning pale dust in a cloud behind them, startling gardeners and casting flocks of sparrows into the air. Aphrodite’s heart raced. The wind rushed her body, stampeding over the knots and nausea and purging them from her system. She let her eyes blur in the stream of green and tropical colours. 

The large, iron gates of the estate rose into view. 

Two satyr guards were positioned one at each side. As the car whipped around the corner, its rightful driver very visibly not present, they stood to attention and levelled their horns. 

One cupped his hairy hands around his mouth and bellowed. “My prince! We have been instructed not to let you leave with any of the vehicles!”

Aphrodite glanced sideways at Ares. His lips were curled in a defiant smile, his eyes narrowed ahead of him and dazzling with fiery light. He revved the engine.

“Your highness, stop!”

The car sped up, the gates looming alarmingly close.

“STOP!”

The engine growled. Aphrodite’s pulse rocketed.

“SIR! WE WILL NOT BE INTIMIDAT-”

“WOULD YOU SHUT UP AND OPEN THE FUCKING GATE!” The second guard leaped across the front of the gate, barged his comrade aside and slammed his fist onto a large, red button by the hinge.

The gates hummed, squeaked, and swung open, just as the car reached them. The satyrs scrambled aside, bellowing in alarm. Ares shot through the almost-too-narrow gap and tore out onto the open road.

Hermes exploded into high laughter. Aphrodite’s stomach kicked. She twisted in her seat and gaped at the still opening gates. 

“Ares!” she gasped.

Ares adjusted his clenched fists on the wheel, not looking at her. “Yeah?”

“Are you crazy?” she spun back into her seat and stared at him.

“I asked you if you wanted to do something crazy.” His voice was callous on the surface, but underneath something was boiling over.

“But you could’ve killed those guys!” 

“Are you angry?”

“Yes!”

He turned his face to her, like a brilliant sunflower turning with the time of day. He grinned. “I can tell.”

Her blood simmered. She hated being challenged. She hated it almost as much as she loved it. She pursed her lips at him and whisked her gaze away, poking her nose haughtily into the air. 

The road was lined with tall, fanning trees, the sunlight sieving through them and dappling their faces, splashing on the car bonnet like pebbles in a pool. The warm wind was invigorating. Aphrodite closed her eyes, ran her fingers into her up-do and teased it apart. Her hair gushed free from its bonds and billowed in a lavender tumult behind her. The frangipani woven into the style flew loose and pirouetted through the air in a peaches and cream swirl. The taut tug on her scalp washed away, relief trickling down the back of her neck and over her shoulders. She hummed in pleasure and kept her fingers running luxuriantly through her hair, drawing out the sensation like the strum of a guitar.

The car swerved, jerked and straightened up. 

Aphrodite snapped her eyes open to see Hermes leaning forward and smacking Ares on the back of the head, beaming and barking, “Eyes on the road, Dumbass!”

Ares batted Hermes away with a scowl. “I know!” He shifted his shoulders and focused ahead, grinding his teeth.

Aphrodite eyed him with a satisfied smirk. Hermes reclined in his seat, arms spread along the back, wildfire hair flailing around his face. His jacket and tie lay next to Ares’ in a bundle. He’d rolled up his sleeves and undone a few shirt buttons, bathing his dark skin in the hot light. He plucked the rose Aphrodite had conjured for him out of the pile of formal wear and stuck it between his teeth, like a cigar. “I can’t believe she’s the one you’re checking out when all this is in your rear view mirror,” he called over the racket of the rush and the engine, voice muffled around the stem, hand lazily indicating his sprawled, lithe form.

Ares poked his tongue into his cheek. “I’m not checking anyone out. I’ve got my eyes on the road.”

“Boooo!” Hermes blew a raspberry. He twizzled the rose between his teeth. “I'm all yours then, Dite.”

Aphrodite laughed. She swivelled in her seat, leaning her elbow on the cushioned leather, and appraised Hermes with pursed lips. She regarded him like an art dealer, taking in his thicket of hair, his brow and mouth quirked with humour, the kiss of the rose petals on his sharp cheekbone, the deep, tempting, strawberry colour of his supple throat, the clean lines of his athletic form under the white shirt, the V of his parted, long legs, fabric taut over his crotch. 

She smacked her lips and faced forward again. “Thanks, I’m done.”

Ares laughed. 

Hermes tutted and twisted a lock of his hair around his finger. “Incredibly rude.”

Aphrodite shimmied her shoulders showily and tossed her hair again. “Sorry, Kiddo, you’re not the prettiest girl at the party anymore, not since I rolled into town.” She reached up and poked the rear view mirror so she could see her reflection in it. She began to comb out her hair with her fingers and rub off the few spots where her make-up had smudged.

Ares readjusted the mirror, chuckling. “What are you doing?”

“Keeping up appearances.” Aphrodite shrugged and turned the mirror back.

“I need that!” Ares wafted at her hand and restored it.

“So do I!” She took it back and tickled his ribs.

He let out the bucking laugh. She grinned and twisted the mirror more squarely around to her. His large hand covered hers on the frame and tried to pull her away. She wrestled with him. Their fingers and their laughter tangled, the mirror flicking right and left, as they fought over it. The car wavered a little on its path, as Ares glared down at Aphrodite with his eyes almost violently lively. His touch was kettle warm. She could feel his unearthly might in the way he nudged his strength softly against her, playing at giving her ground, conceding and making her topple closer.

“Tunes!” Hermes spat out the rose, sprang forward, and broke them apart. He shot his hand out and clicked the radio on. 

Ares gave the mirror a final jab straight. Aphrodite petted Hermes’ head, as it floated back from between them. She and Ares exchanged a glance. His cheeks were cherry in the glimmer from his eyes. He cleared his throat and pulled the car straight, soaring down the straight, empty highway. The DJ on the radio spoke in a smooth, cheerful voice that bled into the opening note of the track he was announcing, a funky, heart-filled love song, oozing allure and dripping with longing. 

Ares and Aphrodite exchanged another glance.

“No!” Hermes lunged between them again and fiddled with the dial.

“Would you cut it out!” Ares snapped, grabbing Hermes’ shoulder and throwing him back.

“I’m boycotting Orpheus!” Hermes insisted. “I did everything I could for that jackass! He had one damn job!”

“Oh, but he’s so good!” Aphrodite exclaimed, switching back to Orpheus’ latest hit. “He really gets it, you know?”

“If he got it, he would have done his ONE JOB!” Hermes reached forward again.

Ares slapped his hand.

He huffed his fringe out of his eyes and slumped in his seat. 

The car sped through the trees and emerged onto a street full of thrift stores and repair shops, spilling their contents in chaotic jumbles onto the sidewalk. Nymphs in brightly coloured tank tops and satyrs in cargo shorts ambled about, smoking, huddling around boom boxes and swaying their hips, haggling with fists full of bills. Aphrodite caught cheap perfume and plastic and the salty scent of a hot dog stand in the coursing air. A djinn drifted by on a skateboard. 

Hermes perked up. “Hey! Wanna see a trick?”

Ares ignored him, but Aphrodite noticed him smile. She turned and narrowed her eyes at Hermes. “What kind of trick?”

Hermes winked. He flashed his wicked eyes to Ares. “Think we still got it?”

The song changed. A pumping beat with zinging vocals buzzing on Aphrodite’s skin. Ares threw a grin to Hermes and turned it up. Hermes crowed. He sprang up to stand on the back seat, the wind rippling his shirt, the white sun flaring behind him. A few people on the street murmured to each other and pointed. Ares turned the volume all the way up, drowning out the speakers in the store fronts. A gaggle of nymphs whooped and picked up the beat in a dance. A harpy fluttered her wings and raised her coffee cup to the convertible.

Aphrodite looked wide-eyed up at Hermes. “What are you doing?”

Hermes just smiled. And jumped into the air. He ran fleet-footed along the trunk of the car and bounded off it, like a stag. Aphrodite screamed. Hermes hurtled in the air, spread his feet, flapped his wings, and dropped to hover an inch off the road, hand hooking the trunk handle. His bicep clenched, his teeth glinted. He threw his free hand out to steady himself and bent his knees. His wings hummed like wasps’, keeping him afloat, as he was pulled skating behind the car. Aphrodite wailed, half laughing, half squealing. She gaped at him and lost her breath. He surfed the wind behind the speeding car, his hair flying, his eyes manic. She shot her stare to Ares, who was smiling menacingly and propelling them forward, his jaw ticking to the racing pump of the music. 

The street erupted into excitement. Cameras flashed and girls cheered and boys made noises like dogs in the pound. Hermes levelled his body and gnashed his teeth. Ares took a corner sharply and Hermes floated into the air, almost on his side, then came swinging down straight again, shirt straining over his flexed arm, as he fought to hang on.

“That all you got, Big Guy?” he called to Ares.

Aphrodite glared at Ares.

He raised a cocky eyebrow at her. He curled his fingers closer around the steering wheel. The car roared. Hermes turned into a blinding flash of scarlet in the pupils of passers-by. 

Aphrodite scrambled to kneel in her seat and lean over the back, laughing in unhinged delight at Hermes. She cupped her hands around her mouth and spurred him on with piercing cheers, her hair a tornado of lavender around her face. 

Ares’ eyes moved before he could stop them. She was kneeling with her ass perked up, the sunset silk of her dress stretched over the roundness, gleaming like a polished nectarine in the sun. Her hair flew like a victory flag, her exposed, curving back drenched in the rich light and tinging violet. Her feet were kicking a little, the keen points of her stilettos glinting. His mouth went dry. She was so full of joy, so thrilled by Hermes, her jubilation more musical than the siren blasting her voice through the radio. His senses crowded with laughter and screams and thudding bass and the vibrations thrumming up his core from the drive. 

He clipped a can on the road and sent it shooting against a wall with a clang. 

_ Eyes on the road, Dumbass. _

He pulled his gaze from Aphrodite. It hurt like ripping a band-aid off. The street tumbled past him, junk and litter and graffiti and sweaty, bustling crowds of people rioting in his vision. The gleeful grins between her and Hermes pressed behind his eyes. The back of his neck burned. He ground his teeth. He stamped on the accelerator. 

Hermes squawked, but hung on, his cry of shock whisking into triumphant hooting that echoed off the brick buildings.

“Hey!” Aphrodite leaned over and punched Ares' arm with the force of a chipmunk bumping into a thick branch. 

He glanced up at her - a pure, elemental force, as the wind and sun lashed around her.

“Don’t break the mailman, I have deliveries!” she scolded.

Ares’ ears flushed hot. He broke into a broad grin and launched them around another corner, rocking Aphrodite, so she dropped back into her seat. She squeaked and punched his arm again. Her mild, giddy anger shot into his bloodstream. It was better than a caffeine hit. His grin turned devilish. “I’m not gonna break him, I’m just testing his limits. You can respect that, right?” 

Aphrodite licked her teeth. “Testing a man’s limits? Absolutely.”

Ares’ pulse cantered rhythmically. He swung close to the sidewalk. Hermes yelped and jumped into the air, then slammed back into position. Aphrodite whipped around to watch him and applauded. He took the encouragement. He slipped his hand from hanging onto the handle and just rested a fingertip on the trunk, forcing his wings faster to keep up. His chest and cheeks pumped rapidly. Aphrodite whistled and clapped raucously. Hermes danced in the car’s wake, riding the rush with his bright, scarlet body blurring into the streamlined shape of the red convertible. Ares kept glancing back, hauling the car around like a truck, rather than driving it with its designed delicacy, seeing how well Hermes kept his balance. 

“Dude! You trying to kill me?”

Would that be an extreme reaction to how much Aphrodite seemed to like the little guy? Nah. Reasonable. Ares ground the wheels into the tarmac, leaving sizzling scorch marks. He sped from the streets and into sparse trees. The square, modern buildings of the university towered over stretching sports fields. They shot past field hockey practice and football training, the gleeful voices of students snatched under the din of the engine. 

“Oh My Gods, that’s Hermes!”

“It’s the sexy mailman!”

“Flash him!”

“Ew, no!”

“Is that Ares?”

“It’s Ares!”

"Hey, Babe!"

“Flash HIM!”

“STOP!”

Aphrodite cast her head back and collapsed into giggles, bunching up in her seat, like a mouse who’d eaten too much cheese. “Did you hear that?”

Ares’ face heated. “Uh... No.”

She shot him a look that he didn’t dare turn to see. Meanwhile, Hermes waved at the students, like he was a charioteer in the arena. He bent his knees, pressed his lips together in concentration, and launched himself into the air. He rose above the car, somersaulted like a dolphin, and landed with a concerning crunch of the suspension back in his seat, hair standing on end, face flushed, smile victorious.

Aphrodite stuffed her fingers in her mouth and gave him a long whistle. He crowed deafeningly, then collapsed back into the leather cushions, catching his breath, his chest shining. “Fuck you, Ares!” he panted.

“Knew you could do it,” Ares replied brashly.

Hermes grinned into the sky, closing his eyes, the rush still in his body.

Aphrodite drank deep of the closeness between Ares and Hermes; a combative, boyish energy that bounced between them, like ping pong balls. She sucked on the last of the air of the vanishing campus; a meadow bloom of new crushes and broken rules. She wriggled in the cosy cushion, the leather rubbing warm friction on her back and thighs. The music kept coming with the hum of the car around her, filling her flesh with quivering motion, making her muscles restless. She looked over at Ares. He was still going thrillingly fast, but his hands had loosened on the wheel and his body was relaxing. He was a confident driver. He moved the heavy, bestial vehicle with intriguing, controlled releases of his immeasurable strength. She could see his bicep rising and rolling under his shirt, as he manipulated the convertible, made the groans and growls pour out of it and its inner workings spin. 

She kicked off her shoes and drew her feet up. She flicked her eyes to him again. She took a steadying breath and pulled herself up to stand on the seat.

The car jerked, almost throwing her off balance.

“What the fuck are you up to, Miss?” Ares spluttered.

“Keep it steady!” Aphrodite commanded, shuffling her feet in the leather to get her balance. “I want to dance!”

Ares' stunning eyes went round, then hot. "Yes, Ma'am." He rolled his shoulders and adjusted his hands on the wheel, slowing the car a touch so it flowed smoothly down the boulevard. White houses and apartment buildings glowed behind the rows of green. 

Aphrodite bounced her knees, letting her joints go springy. She opened her mouth, her throat and lungs and belly flooding with cool, racing air. It raked through her hair and made her pores spark. The buzz of the engine and the music pulsed into her bare feet through the seat, gripped her legs, and wound into her core. She began to move, all instinct and passion. She splayed her hands in the air, tossed her head back, and gave herself over to the song. Her hips revolved and bucked and swayed. Her shoulders rolled and shook. Her thighs spread and nearly split the tight hem of her dress. Her torso undulated, sunlight kissing her breasts. Her arms waved like cotton grass. Her head lolled, her eyes fluttering, her lips parted. She whipped and writhed, as the world swirled around her. 

Hermes wolf-whistled, beaming up at her and clapping his hands in time with the music moving her body like river currents. She flashed him her flooring smile and swished her ass towards him, tugging up the short skirt of her dress to show the thin string of her panties over her hip bone. Hermes laughed, slipped a bill out of his pocket and tucked it into the string. His hand moved towards her ass. She slapped it hard and whipped her face away tauntingly. 

The car swerved.

Aphrodite squeaked and almost toppled. Hermes lunged forward and steadied her with his hands on the small of her back. She planted her feet and rounded on Ares with a shark’s grin. He was facing fiercely straight ahead, his cheeks blazing like traffic lights. 

She kicked up her foot and prodded his shoulder with her toe. “I said keep it steady!”

Ares visibly swallowed, glancing with a tight mouth at her bare foot. “I-I am!” he stammered.

She yapped an unconvinced laugh and threw herself back into the wind, her motions blending into it.

Ares sucked on his lip. He waited for her to look away and take up her dance again. He sneaked his eyes up her body. He could hardly breathe.

A car honked behind them. Aphrodite twirled and Hermes twisted to see another convertible speeding on their tail, crowded with nymphs sat up on the backs of the seats, radio tuned to the same station. Hermes waved delightedly and gestured for them to pull up alongside. The driver was in a pair of sunglasses far too big for his face and a baseball cap turned backwards, so his tuft of yellow fringe poked through it. He flashed Hermes a grin and revved the engine. He zoomed to their side, Ares dropping back to let him. He shot Ares a finger gun, then immediately started to leer up at Aphrodite. Ares’ back itched. 

Aphrodite bathed in the attention. The wild glee of the nymphs, the impulsivity gushing from both cars, the sexy, aggressive music amplified by both stereos, all catching her up in a whirling embrace. Everyone thought she was gorgeous. Everyone thought this was the most fun they could have in their lives. Everyone had let go and was outrunning the world. Hermes jumped up and started dancing too. The nymphs joined in from their seats, caterwauling along with the radio. One of them threw a cookie across to Hermes, who caught it in his mouth. One locked eyes with Aphrodite and mimicked her movements, letting Aphrodite guide her. One of them called to Ares to blow her a kiss. He glanced over and grinned, but didn’t oblige. She pouted. Hermes flapped his wings, soared over the gap between the gliding cars, hooked her chin, and sealed his lips to hers. Aphrodite was washed in excited desire. She spun on her toes and let it wrap her body. Hermes peeled away from the delighted nymph and flew back to the car. He made a show of collapsing into his seat with adoration, as she fanned herself and her friends cheered. The driver tipped his cap, and the party turned off down another road, the clamorous music and calling fading away. Aphrodite beamed at Hermes and his dizzy smile. She swayed back into dancing.

Ares’ blood burned his veins. Aphrodite’s bare thighs were too close, parting and tensing and quivering right at the edge of his vision. She moved as if she was moulded out of song, the pounding beat rattling his skull and punching his abdomen over and over. She serpentined and thrust beside him, casting her perfume into the air, chased by the natural sweet-salt of her sweat. His palms chafed on the steering wheel, feeling the plastic heat so much from his grip that it started to turn malleable. He tried to force his concentration into the drive, but the distraction of Aphrodite was besieging.

“Hey!” She bent down and ruffled his hair, setting his skin on fire. “Stop looking so grim, we’re having fun!”

Ares looked up at her, the sun bursting behind her, like a pair of white-gold wings. “I… I am. I gotta drive.”

“Well, you’ll drive me mad with a face like that!” she giggled. “Smile for me!” 

Ares bared his teeth, his cheeks prickling. “Make me.”

Sparks leaped in her eyes. She drove her pointed foot into his side and wiggled her toes, shooting tickles around his torso. Ares spasmed and erupted into bounding laughter, nerves and sensation ripping through his muscle. He gripped the wheel in one hand and batted at her with the other, looking frantically between Aphrodite and the road, the colours wheeling in his vision. She kept her balance balletically, torturing his side, cackling impishly, while she dodged his swipes. Hermes cackled with her, drumming his hands and feet on the car seats to the galloping rhythm of the radio. Ares snatched at her leg and pushed it away hard, the bolts going through his body making him forget his strength. 

Aphrodite squealed and lurched backwards. 

Her arms wind-milled desperately. 

Her feet left earth. 

The landscape reeled behind her. 

Hermes yelped. 

Ares’ heart banged. 

He flung his body towards her, hand reaching out, car screeching sideways. He grabbed Aphrodite’s ankle and wrenched it back. She tipped forward. Her foot in his grasp landed on the seat. Her arms wind-milled the other way. She gasped and fell forward, her body crashing over Ares, like a descending storm cloud. The car skidded around the tarmac, churning his organs inside him. He let go of her ankle and threw his palm up. She was stopped in mid-air, leaning over him, his hand pressed firmly to her belly, fingertips grazing the undersides of her breasts. Her heart hammered against his fingers, her panting breath pushing her belly out to fill his palm. One of her hands curled over his, the other clutched his arm with the strength of crocodile jaws. 

Their eyes met, wide and staring and shocked.

“TREE!” Hermes squawked.

Ares gasped and turned to see the car was hurtling towards a solid trunk. He barked and spun the steering wheel. They straightened on the road and coursed on. His blood roared in his ears. 

Hermes let out a deep sigh of relief and squeezed Ares’ shoulder. “Nice save.”

Ares nodded breathlessly. He ensured they were on a safe, straight path, then looked back to Aphrodite, who his hand was still propping up, stood bent double in mid-fall on the passenger seat. The heat of her body seeped into this touch. She kept hold of him, batting her huge eyes. Ares gazed up at her looming over him and broke into a broad, sparkling grin.

She beamed. “There. Got you to smile.”

Ares blinked, his pulse racing, his mind soaring. Laughter pounced out of him unbidden. He snared the fabric of her dress and pulled. Aphrodite giggled wildly and let herself fall into his lap. Her warmth and softness tumbled into his senses and settled against his body. She sat across his thighs, feet on her seat, arms looped around his neck. 

She glared up into his face with a sizzling, stripping gaze. “Cad.”

Ares cocked an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth lifted. “You wanted me to smile. This’ll do it.”

His heart thumped against her leaning on his chest. She must be able to feel it. He fought against the rising warmth spreading over his neck, keeping an eye on the road and the trembling heat haze on the black strip. 

Aphrodite pouted at him with a dangerous look. “Oh, this’ll do, will it?” 

She circled her fingertip on the nape of his neck and shifted pointedly in his lap. Her ass ground over his cock. Ares flooded hot. His mouth went dry and his body felt seized in iron. He choked on an intake of breath and glared at her. She smirked and shrugged.

“Don’t kiss him,” Hermes called mockingly from behind, ferreting in his abandoned jacket. “He’ll definitely crash.”

Ares closed his arm a little around her. “We’re gods, we’d survive.”

“Yeah,” Hermes said. “But Dite’d be mad you ruined the nice day out and you don’t want to tangle with her temper. This is a woman who was literally born out of a guy being castrated.”

Ares chuckled. He definitely  _ did  _ want to tangle with her temper.

“I don’t kiss princes anyway,” Aphrodite said coolly. “You never know when they’ll turn into frogs.”

Ares bristled. Keeping his hands on the wheel was becoming the hardest thing he’d ever done. Her hair kept blowing into his face and brushing his lips. She was so, agonisingly soft.

She slipped from his lap and clambered back to the passenger side in a tangle of long, shapely limbs, leaving Ares both iced and scorching.

“Elegant,” Hermes snorted.

“Shush you,” she tutted, sitting on the headrest, feet on the cushion. She took a deep, relaxing breath with her face turned up to the sun, her skin dappled by the trees lining the boulevard.

Hermes retrieved what he’d been searching for in his jacket, a crumpled joint and a lighter. He flicked the lighter a few times. Nothing happened. “Damn it, out of fuel. Hey, Hot Stuff, would ya?” He held the joint out to Ares.

Ares reached around and pressed his thumb to the tip. It hissed and blazed to life, a tendril of smoke rising into the air. Aphrodite smiled.

“Much obliged.” Hermes rocked back with one arm behind his head and slipped the thin twist of paper between his lips. He blew a stream of earthy, sweet smoke into the air, humming and letting his body go limp.

“Sharing is caring, Jam Pot.” Aphrodite said, holding onto the headrest and tipping backwards, her hair swishing. 

Hermes smiled. “Jam Pot, that’s new.”

“It’s because you’re so sweet.”

“I prefer Hot Sauce.”

“Tough.”

He reached out and held the joint to her lips. She sucked on it luxuriantly and sighed out a cloud of pink, shimmering smoke that bloomed into the shape of a heart. Ares beamed, gazing at the heart. Aphrodite caught his eye and shimmied her shoulders. She fluttered her fingers at Hermes to make him offer to Ares. Ares hesitated, but he figured it took a lot for substances to get through his dense body. Hermes hovered the joint at his mouth. He took a drag and held the smoke in his mouth a moment, burnt sugar tingling on his tongue. He breathed it in, caught Aphrodite’s eye again, and jetted the smoke from his teeth. It flourished across the windshield and took the form of a pouncing, roaring lion, red sparks in the eyes, mane wisping in white tendrils into the sunlight. Aphrodite giggled and clapped. He told himself he wasn’t blushing. He leaned back in his seat with a new calm oozing through his muscles, and slowed the car.

They turned onto a more populated street, cars zipping past them, kids riding their bikes, dogs barking, shoppers gossiping. A jogger’s sneakers thudded on the paving, discman rattling at his belt. Two nymphs ambled side by side, hands in each other’s back pockets. A centaur clopped along with his nose in a newspaper, while imps scrambled about his hooves, trying to get past. A siren sat on a small, iron balcony, preening her feathers behind a row of flower pots. 

Ares watched Aphrodite take it all in. She gazed at every person on the street in turn, her smile bright and true and blessing. She closed her eyes and hummed in pleasure, her skin glowing the pretty colour of sweetpea flowers. She folded her hands over her heart, then extended them cupped in front of her. She opened her eyes, a candy pink light illuminating her pupils. She unfurled her hands. Red rose petals flew from them and streamed into the sky. They fluttered down the street, showering the passers-by, whirling around the car and out into the city. People frowned in confusion, laughed, took pictures, ran to catch them, skipped through the soft rain of petals, each one a secret wish let loose in the summer heat.

Hermes laughed and batted at them, like a kitten.

Ares felt them land in his hair and kiss his neck. He made sure he was driving straight, then moved his gaze up to Aphrodite. The marvellous goddess beamed into the city, petals in her lap and flying about her radiant face. 

She spread her arms and called out in a ringing, irresistible voice, echoing off the apartment blocks and winging on the wind. “Fall in love today, Olympus!” 

Ares took a deep breath of the smoke and the breeze and the essence of Aphrodite always on his tongue. 

He smiled. 

_ Sure thing, Beautiful. _

*

They drove until the wildness had run off them into the wind. The radio DJ changed to the leisurely drawl of a cyclops, announcing easy-going, early evening tunes. The sun lowered in the sky, painting the pale buildings the peach colour of Aphrodite’s dress and lengthening the shadows of dracaena trees with their long, spidery leaves. 

Ares cruised along the highway that spiralled around the edge of the mountain, the sea glittering in a silver-turquoise strip in the distance below them, orange from the edge of sunset bleeding into it. The convertible engine’s roar dimmed to a lulling hum. It mingled with Hermes’ soft snores from where he lay balled up on the back seat, his jacket pillowing his cheek, Ares’ jacket draped over him as a blanket. Aphrodite smiled affectionately at the snoozing boy, then reclined in the passenger seat, tucking her bare feet under her, her arm stretched along the car door. The breeze stroked her hair off her face and ran a soft touch over her lips. Her body finally felt peaceful. 

She nudged her gaze sideways to Ares. The sunset poured over his face, enriching the gold and ruby of his complexion. It was like the world had two suns, staring into each other’s eyes. She chuckled at how offended Helios would be at that thought.

“What?” Ares asked, looking at her with a startlingly innocent expression, for such a trouble-maker.

She blinked and shook her head, smiling and looking down. “Oh, nothing. Just inner monologuing.” 

He nodded and looked back at the road.

She eyed him curiously. The look in his eyes was always so busy. All that fire had to be stricken up somehow. She huffed nonchalantly and flicked a stray rose petal off her dress. “So, God of War is a new position.”

“Literally this year,” he said.

“What were you doing before then?”

His fingers shifted on the wheel, still looking ahead. “Uh, college.”

“Right,” she prompted, “but then?”

“Summer.”

She frowned. “And… then?”

Ares glanced at her with a hint of confusion. “God of War.”

Aphrodite narrowed her eyes. “Wait. How old are you?”

Ares’ unreadable expression gave over to a goading grin. “Oh, no, I'm not telling you that.”

She pouted. “Why?”

“Because I'm young and you'll make a thing out of it.”

“How young?”

“Young.”

She smiled and leaned her cheek on her fingertip, elbow on the car door. “I'm so intrigued. Come on, what kind of thing could I make out of it?”

Ares shot her a glimmering look. “Well, for one, you might stop flirting with me.”

Aphrodite made an indignant noise. “I am not flirting with you!”

He snorted. “You're totally flirting with me.”

“That's just, like, my demeanour.”

“Your flirt demeanour.”

She struggled to keep her smile in. “OK. Fine. But you like it, so…” She stuck her tongue out.

“I do like it,” Ares said in a warm tone that sparked an ache between her thighs. “That's why I don't want you to stop when you find out how old I am.”

“Aw, pleeease,” she whined.

“Nope.”

“Pretty please.” She batted doe eyes at him. 

He glanced at her. Then away. Then back. Then away. Then back. She kept up her pleading look. 

His hefty shoulders drooped in surrender. “Fine, I’m 23.”

“203? Wow, that is kinda young.”

“Uh, ha, no… 23.”

Aphrodite balked. “I'm sorry, 23, double figures?”

He looked at her shiftily. “Yeah.”

Her jaw dropped and a high laugh left her. “Ah! That IS young!”

He grimaced. “Told you.”

“Oh My Gods!” she railed. “You're a child! You're a little, tiny baby!”

“OK, no.”

“But you are! Are you even old enough to drive? Are you even old enough to eat solid food?”

“Shut uuup!” he groaned.

“Tartarus,” she snickered, “I have bras older than you.”

“You do not! Wait, do you?”

She whistled and ran her hand through her hair. “Oh, no, you're right, I must stop flirting with you.”

He dropped his head back despairingly. “Nooo!”

“No, I have to. This might actually get me on a list.”

“I am an adult!” 

“Barely!”

His tropical popsicle face glowed red. It was like watching a toddler get his toys taken away. Aphrodite met his furious, scrunched up expression with another burgeoning wave of giggles. 

Her mirth dispersed his frustration, but left his cheeks bright. He glared at the road. “Fucking Fates.” He heaved a sigh. “OK, what mature shit do I have to do to unfreak you out?”

Her mouth quirked. “What, like getting into a mood and stealing your dad's car?”

His hackles went up. “You know, I've been very cool about your extreme old age, Grandma. You might have bras older than me, but there are mountain ranges younger than you.”

She gasped in an utterly appalled tone. “Wow!”

“Yeah, I said it!”

“I'll have you know, I am aging to perfection!” she announced. “I'm way hotter now than when I was some young whippersnapper. Like you.”

He laughed and smiled smoothly. “Ah, see I don't think that's how it's gonna be for me.”

She cocked her head. “No?”

“Nah, I think this is where I peak,” he said. “Like, I'm pretty dumb, and also in great shape. So I'm at that perfect age to just be used for my body and kicked to the curb with a smile on my face and teeth marks on my neck.”

Aphrodite bit her lip, eyes roving around the ridges of muscle under his shirt. “Mmmm…”

He grinned sidelong at her. “I know, right?”

“An excellent stage of life,” she purred.

He chuckled. “Yeah, I'm enjoying it.”

She echoed his chuckle, keeping her eyes on him, on the glance of sunshine on his clean jaw, on a rose petal still snug in his vanilla curls, dusted gold. He eased the car skilfully around a tight bend, the warm light popping on the sea behind him. His eyes darkened, as he silhouetted slightly. 

“You're not dumb,” she said softly.

“Ask my professors,” he huffed.

She waved at him dismissively. “I'm older than the entire concept of school, I don't really go in for its standards.”

“Then ask my parents.” His tone turned a little bitter.

She smirked. “I'm older than them too.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Weird.”

“Gross, right?”

“Totally. You better stop flirting with me.”

“Definitely.”

He turned to her with a cocky half-grin. “I mean, you know, if you can.”

She pressed her lips together to suppress a wide smile. “Well, we'll see how it goes.”

She leaned her cheek fully on her hand and gazed out ahead of them. The windshield captured the landscape in a gleaming bubble; tall, stylish buildings, striped awnings, rainbows of wandering residents, the distant, alluring mirage of the sea. It was beautiful. It was alive and easy and fleeting in the soaring speed of the car, Ares at the wheel, letting her drift. She turned her face and peeked at him from behind her curtain of hair. He was breathing slowly and deeply. It moved his whole body under his fitted clothes. She gazed at the furrows of fabric around his crotch between his broad, parted thighs in the suit trousers, at the sliver of sunflower skin under his collar, at the way his tongue moved in his mouth. 

He glanced sideways and met her eyes. “Well done, you lasted 14 seconds.”

She flapped her hand defensively. “I'm just looking, that's not flirting!”

His lip curled. “It's the way you were looking.”

She tossed her hair. “You are a self-proclaimed piece of meat, what else am I supposed to do?”

“I dunno, look at the sunset,” he laughed.

She brazenly appraised him again. “You're prettier,” she said quietly.

He smiled, his ears rimming red. He looked at her with something between encouragement and shyness. “Now, that was definitely flirting.”

She dropped back in her seat and rolled her eyes with a helpless groan. “Ugh, you're right. I'm a bad person.”

“Yep.” He lightened his voice. “Since I can't fix this, I'm just gonna make it worse for you.”

She winced. “Please don't.”

He grinned mischievously straight ahead. “I can't grow a beard properly yet.”

She coughed in horror. “Oh no!”

“Uhuh. Like, I get the stubble, but I haven't really grown into it coming through long.”

She planted her hand over her eyes. “Thanks, I hate it.”

“I still live in my childhood bedroom, and there's a baseball on my shelf that a mascot gave to me when I was 8.”

“Eeeew!”

“I remember the people in my high school yearbook.”

“Stoooop!”

Her pleas muffled in her hands, as she buried her face in misery. Ares’ laughter boomed around the building tops and down the mountain. She laughed too, higher and harmonising. Hermes snuffled in his sleep, but didn’t wake up. 

Aphrodite laughed all the awkwardness out and lowered her hands, leaving her face flushed. She smiled thoughtfully. “Gods, I feel like I have to take care of you now.” She sobered. The fright and hurt she’d seen on his apparently very young face when she’d stumbled around the greenhouse wall leaked into her mind. She twisted her fingers together in her lap and cleared her throat. “So, on that note, do you want to talk about why you were hiding out at the party?”

Ares flinched. She instinctively opened her mouth to retract the question, but something made her hold her ground. The problem with hard shells was people tended to think they were solid through and through. A lot of soft centres curdled that way. She carefully stilled her face, keeping it open, but not pitying. 

Ares shifted uncomfortably, gnawing on the inside of his cheek, his brow furrowed. How much to say tug-of-warred in his mind. He didn’t want to close off from her, the idea of pushing her away scared him more than honesty. But how much honesty was enough to keep her? 

_ “She wouldn't go for you anyway. She doesn't use blunt instruments.” _

And how much honesty was too much?

_ “To someone else it will be too much to handle. Crazy Ares.” _

He rubbed the back of his neck, shaking his father’s voice out his head. He kept his eyes on the black strip of road sucked up like a noodle by the front of the car. “Dad stuff,” he mumbled.

“What kind of stuff?” Her voice was gentle, genuine.

He gulped. “Uh…”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” she said. “But, you know, we’re out here alone.” Hermes snored. “Essentially. So, if you do want to talk…” She trailed off and tucked her hair behind her ear.

Ares looked at his knuckles on the wheel. The grind of tires on tarmac was a good painkiller, but Aphrodite’s tenderness reminded him that the wound had gone untreated, had been going untreated since he got back. He chewed his tongue. “It’s…” He exhaled sharply through his nose. He wanted to look at her sweet face, but if he did, he might stop speaking. “He’s an asshole. That’s the long and short of it. He’s the most unbelievable asshole. And he just slouches around getting away with it. No one calls him out. He’s got two brothers who are supposed to be part of some triarchy of power, and they do fuck all and just let him be an asshole.” He suddenly remembered Aphrodite’s relationship with Uncle Poseidon. He winced. “Sorry.”

She shook her head, speaking in a low voice. “No, you’re right. Don’t tell anyone, but Trite and Posey fight about it from time to time. He wants to keep the kingdoms split, prevent any conflict, head down, do the job. But Zeus is… Well…”

“An asshole.”

She laughed under her breath. “Yes.”

Ares clucked his tongue, pushing his energy into keeping his voice level. “Anyway, so no one else will say anything. So I try to, sometimes. And I suck at it and it just ends up being this twisted interaction that makes me feel like…” His tongue knotted.

Aphrodite waited. Her patience was both soothing and jarring. 

He didn’t continue.

“Like what, Ares?” she asked, barely audible over the rumbling engine.

Ares frowned into the sunset, letting it burn his retinas. He spoke through his teeth. “Like I’m overreacting. Like I’m the problem. The kid that picks a fight. The difficult one to be around. Aggressive. Volatile.”

Aphrodite took this in. She thought of the spice of Ares’ desire, the unabashedness of it, the way he’d looked at her like a highwayman and said  _ “Wanna do something crazy?”  _ She rolled her shoulders and raised her chin. “I think it’s a good thing to be a little volatile.”

Ares turned to her, the vulnerable hope behind his stern gaze melting her. She held his eye sincerely, then looked at the road, to make sure he would too. It was her turn now. She hadn’t really planned for that, but he was big and easy and it felt like whispering secrets to your teddy bear. Her lips parted and let out her voice, slow and soft. “I mean, I was hiding out too, remember? And it was basically because I couldn’t stand to be in the party anymore. Because everyone there was so pent up. Decorum this and dignity that. Olympus is a city full of people who would rather save face than save their hearts. That’s how you strangle a love goddess.” She pushed at a stubborn cuticle, face turned down. “Every hidden want and resentful secret just sat on my chest, until I couldn’t breathe. If just one person had been a little volatile. Had said something they were keeping back, or taken a risk, or given into an impulse, had fucking even eaten something full fat…” She hummed, almost growling, thinking of the horrible suffocation of earlier. She felt Ares’ gaze on her. She swallowed and looked at him bravely, right into his eyes. “And then I got to talk to you.”

Ares’ eyebrows floated up, his curls ruffled by the breeze, that one stuck rose petal flickering. 

She smiled. “Meeting you again was the first time I could really breathe all day.”

Ares’ lip quivered. His broad chest rose. He blinked and flicked his eyes to the road. “What about Hermes? Wasn’t he your party date?”

Aphrodite sipped on the slightest peppermint flavour of jealousy and smiled wider. She twisted to look at the napping messenger god, his fringe a mess on his brow. “Hermes was born mortal. I like mortals. Blood and ichor both carry passions around the body, but ichor is absinthe to blood’s wine. It’s potent, it’s pure element and emotion.” Her tone turned wistful. “Mortals turn to us because we are the epitome of how they feel, what they desire. Everything for us is a thousand times stronger than they could conceive, it’s concentrated, purified. When a mortal suppresses something, it’s like they’re sitting on an over-full suitcase. You just have to help them up and repack it with them. When a god suppresses something, it's like plugging a geyser. I spent the whole afternoon with that centre-of-the-earth steam trying to break out from under my skin.” She shook out her hands to disperse the memory of pressure. Another wave of words spilled out. “I’ve only been to one Olympus royal party before, when I was young. I mean, not you-young, me-young.” She glanced playfully at his narrowed eyes, then pushed on. “It was a disaster. In the ocean, love just flows. I’d never been in an environment with so much frustration. It squirmed and burned in my body. I felt sick. My senses all got confused. I started to panic.” She swallowed, throat tight. “I mean really panic. First it was hyperventilating, then it was screaming at people. I just started running up to people and screaming their secrets at them, begging them to say something, do something. Gods, I don’t even remember what I said, it’s such a blur. I threw up on someone’s shoes. I broke this super expensive vase. I just lost it. I was like a bat in a cage.” She spoke in a flat stream to her knees, not wanting to look up and see Ares’ reaction, her hands twining anxiously in her lap, stomach writhing at the recall. “Trite bundled me out of the room and held me until I stopped shaking, then she took me home without saying goodbye to anyone.” She flexed her hands and puffed out her cheeks. “And I’ve never been back to Olympus since. Until now.”

Her pulse thudded painfully. She’d sworn that she wouldn’t speak of that night ever again, certainly not to anyone on Olympus who didn’t know about it. After all, only the Six Traitors were around at the time. She’d figured enough new gods had risen up that the memory in the city would at least be diluted. What was she doing blurting it out to some guy she’d met twice? Fates, he must think she was a freak. She’d been having so much fun with him and now she’d gone and dropped too much of the stressful backstory and he was bound to -

A huge, warm hand covered both of hers in her lap. 

Aphrodite started out of her spiralling thoughts and looked up in surprise. Ares was looking down at her with a serious expression. His fingers curled around hers protectively. “That sounds awful,” he said in a low, gentle rumble. “It makes sense you took a while to come back.”

Her eyes pricked. She loosened her coiled fingers under his to feel more of his touch. Warmth glimmered in her chest.

Ares squeezed her hands, then moved his hand and eyes back to the wheel. “I’m glad you did, though,” he mumbled.

She blinked the sudden tears away and smiled. She squared her shoulders and sighed casually, lightening her voice and flopping back in her seat. “So, yeah, anyway. Hermes is a relief, because his blood is easier to be around, as well as being a more impulsive guy. But it’s not the same relief as a born Olympian giving me what I need.”

Ares fidgeted, voice going gruff. “And, uh… what do you need?”

“Someone who feels.” She rolled her head on the headrest and settled into gazing at him, at the quiet chaos of emotion in the fire spilling from his eyes. “Someone who really feels and doesn’t hate himself for it.” She watched him turn the car, face thoughtful, mouth soft. “So, please don’t let Zeus make you another person who hates himself for feeling, Ares. I need that big, angry heart beating.”

Ares’ throat closed. His heart thrummed. His fingers trembled on the wheel. He swallowed and steadied himself. His heart felt like it was emerging out of a sealed case, he was something between elated and raw. He dared himself to look at her. Her eyes were filled with sunset, rose swirling into violet. He couldn’t hold her gaze, it was too penetrating. It made him too dizzy to drive. He dropped his eyes, then shifted them to the sea crowning the horizon. “Back at ya,” he said roughly.

Aphrodite frowned curiously.

He cleared his throat. “I have a similar thing, but with anger. And everything festers on Olympus. Dad doesn’t let anything go and doesn’t let anyone resolve anything without him, but he’s shit at resolution, so everyone’s got this horde of crap they’re angry about under the surface, just going stale and rotten.”

She looked at him steadily. He tried to remember the last time he’d been allowed to pause this long in conversation without being cut off. He let himself have some silence, have time to think about what he was trying to say. He breathed carefully and continued. “But, you don’t have anger like that. Yours is clean and passionate and protective. It feels like you believe in your anger, like you trust it.”

She smiled. “I do.”

“You should!” His heart kicked his voice louder than he intended. His words hurried a little. “This is the thing that I don’t get. Anger is this huge sin, right? It’s wrong to snap. It’s poor character, or whatever. But when has any change ever happened where someone wasn’t angry first? ‘That’s not fair, that’s frustrating, that hurt, that’s gotta stop.’ That's the shit we say before we make things better! So why are they always so against getting angry?” His breath jetted out in a snarl. 

Aphrodite gazed at him warmer. There it was, that strength, that will, that she’d sensed on their meeting. Pure sunbeams in a jar that just needed the top popping off. “Exactly.”

“Exactly!” He barked a relieved laugh. “Fates, thanks Aphrodite. Feels good not to be told I’m being a hot-tempered teenager or something.”

She beamed. “Hey, without hot-tempered teenagers, my job would be way less interesting.”

He laughed. The tension in their bodies broke. They relaxed a little towards each other in their seats. Their eyes met, sparkling in the sunset. The car buzzed under them. 

“Hermes and I are just friends.” Aphrodite said it without thinking, so impulsively she wasn’t even sure she’d said it out loud.

Ares blinked in surprise, then showed his sharp teeth, eyes fiendish. “Why are you telling me that?”

Aphrodite’s face flushed. She bunched up her shoulders and turned briskly away. “No reason.”

Ares turned back to the road, looking extremely pleased with himself.

“Shut up,” she grumbled.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were saying it with your face.”

“Then stop looking at my face.”

She scoffed. “Youths.”

Ares bellowed a laugh. It echoed sonorously off the buildings. Hermes snorted and snapped awake, sitting up abruptly with one side of his hair flat. “Whadimiss?” he gabbled sleepily.

Aphrodite and Ares exchanged a smile. 

Aphrodite rolled her eyes from him and to the amber and topaz sea. “Nothing, Jam Pot. Just chatting.”

*

The car hummed and glided to stop in front of Aphrodite’s house. The sun had just dipped below the horizon, the sky painted the colour of her hair. 

Ares turned off the engine and watched her out of the corner of his eye. The misty twilight made her look like a dream. Her face was serene, a little weary, all her vibrant, mesmerising expressions of the day drifting behind his eyes. He glanced down to her hand resting on her knee. His fingers twitched, as if to stroke it. He remembered holding her hands under his, delicate and warm. 

He cleared his throat. “Home sweet home.” 

She smiled and nodded. Her eyes moved to his. She opened her mouth to speak. 

Hermes darted his face between them, elbows on their headrests. “Need walking to the door? I was supposed to be your escort.”

“Oh, Hermes, you were not good at that,” Aphrodite said, tutting.

“Hey!” He perked up like a parakeet. “I got you a corsage!”

She giggled, cupped his chin, and kissed his cheek. He kissed hers, and dropped back into his seat. 

She got out of the car. 

Ares acutely felt her leave his side, like he was falling into a snowdrift. He almost moved to follow. He dug his heels into the matting and stayed in the driver’s seat. 

Aphrodite walked around the front of the car, a momentary ethereal vision in the headlights. Ares exhaled carefully. His eyes slipped to the rear view mirror to watch her walk away. His heart bucked when she appeared at his side, ducking to lean her crossed forearms on his door. She bent her face close to his, the last dregs of her dark perfume making his mouth water.

“This was fun,” she murmured.

He watched her mouth move as she spoke. His mind went blank. “Yeah.”

He kept looking at her mouth. The air felt dense around them, packing them into a close, confined space, weighing them down. Ares was hypnotised by every detail of her lips, every glisten of her lip gloss, every quiver with her breath. There was a tiny, almost invisible freckle in the corner of her mouth. He couldn’t not imagine sucking on it. The softness of her lips exemplified the softness of her being. The padding of her body against his when she’d dropped into his lap. The petals bursting from her hands. Her voice when she’d asked him what was wrong and made it all OK for a while.

Aphrodite ran her tongue subtly just behind her lower lip, pushing it out a little. Ares was so close she could almost taste him. She sneaked open her senses. Spice and something new, something keen and fresh and tender. Her heart swelled. She dropped forward a fraction, brushing the end of her nose on his. The light touch sent a shiver through her.

“Are you cold?” he whispered.

She shook her head.

_ Should I kiss him? _

_ Should I kiss her? _

_ Are they gonna kiss, or do I have to sit in the back and pretend I’m not here all night? _

Aphrodite wet her lip, keeping her voice as quiet as his, like lovers meeting in the night. “Thank you. For listening. And miraculously not crashing the car.”

Ares grinned. “Thanks for trusting me when I said we should do something crazy.”

She laughed low, her hair sweeping over one side of her face, shadowing her one visible eye so it glittered. “I think I came with you precisely because you seemed untrustworthy.”

He bit his lip and released it, tinted gold with rising ichor. His eyes wandered over the purple blush high on her cheeks. “Hey, whatever works.”

She giggled under her breath. The sound tickled the small of his back.

_ Fuck, I wanna kiss her. But I shouldn’t. This was good. I don’t wanna ruin it. _

_ He opened up a lot today, I don’t want to scare him. _

_ What if I just banged their heads together? Might work. _

Her hair tickled his neck.

_ Shit, she smells good. _

_ Damn, he has a cute mouth. _

_ Guuuuys, I gotta pee. Hurry it up. _

She sighed, as if breathing in the sea air before going below deck. 

She looked once more into his eyes. 

He swam in her gaze, every inch of his flesh tingling.

_ “Fall in love today, Olympus.” _

“Ares?” she whispered.

“Uhuh?”

She smiled. “See you around.”

She pushed off from her lean and strolled away from the car, stroking Hermes’ hair briefly as she passed. 

Ares didn't move until she was at her front door. She turned back. Their eyes locked in the rear view mirror. Her keys caught the taillights. 

And she was gone.

Ares let out a long breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. His heart sank into his stomach. He groaned softly and dropped his head back onto the headrest. 

Hermes kicked the back of his chair. “You suck!”

Ares grunted wordlessly.

“How did you not kiss her?” Hermes demanded.

Ares grunted again. “Something something, respecting women, something something, what if she didn’t want me to, something, self-loathing, something, regret, something.”

Hermes rolled his eyes. “You can walk face first into a battleaxe, but not a painfully obvious smut opportunity.”

“Can’t smut.” Ares droned. “You’re too high to drive.”

“I could fly home.”

“You’re too high to fly.”

Hermes started to snuggle under the jackets again. “Something something, joke about being a high flyer.”

Ares turned the key in the ignition. “Something something, I don’t remember your address so I’m throwing you out wherever.”

Hermes closed his eyes. “Something something, you’re just jealous I got a kiss and you didn’t.”

Ares rolled the car off the gravel back onto the road. “Something something, fuck you.”

They trundled off into the twilight. 

Aphrodite watched the car vanish through a tiny gap in her bedroom curtains. 

*

Acteon slipped into the crimson glow of the dark room, the photographs from Hera’s garden party strung up to dry, like bunting. The familiar, chemical smell sharpened his brain.

He put his hands in his pockets and ambled around the rim of the room, taking in every photograph in turn. Aphrodite and Hermes laughing with sparkling eyes. Aphrodite smiling at a startled and blushing Artemis. Aphrodite exchanging a conspiratorial glance with Apollo. Aphrodite and Ares beaming into each other’s faces. Zeus raising his glass with a predatory smile. 

He rubbed the stubble on his neck.

Aphrodite laughing. Aphrodite whispering. Aphrodite tipping her glass. Aphrodite snapping. Aphrodite storming off. Aphrodite thinking he wasn’t worth talking to.

Something struck him.

He fumbled in his jacket and retrieved his notebook, leafing through it in a frenzy to the last page of his notes. Under the final line of scrawl he wrote his headline.

_ Fertility Goddess Playing the Field. _


	6. “Was this a date?”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ares and Aphrodite run into each other at the Mount Olympus Mall. They don't plan to spend the day together, it just sort of... happens. 
> 
> In which Oceans reveals her feral extrovert longing to go to malls again, and writes an extremely indulgent, too long fluff chapter as a coping mechanism. More self-control to be exercised next time.
> 
> (In this chapter, Ares is specified as Zeus and Hera's only son. I plotted out this whole story long before we met Heph and couldn't really find room for him, so tragically we're in a universe where he doesn't exist. I know, I miss him too.)
> 
> Song: [FNT, Semisonic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYmdoaB71Do)

" _‘Fertility Goddess Playing the Field.’_ Fertility Goddess Playing the Field?!" Aphrodite snapped the latest issue of  _ Panoptes  _ furiously in her hands, the glossy paper making the sound of a whip. 

"Anything for a pun, I guess." Peitho shrugged, put her bubblegum in her front teeth, pulled it into a long, pink, gooey ribbon, and wrapped it around her finger. 

The two goddesses sat on Aphrodite's cream couch, piled with lilac, heart-shaped cushions. They leaned against opposite arms of the sofa with their bare feet entwined in the middle of the cushions. Morning sun whispered through gossamer drapes and glimmered on the garish, centrefold spread covering Hera's garden party. Or rather, Aphrodite's movements at said party. 

"I'm barely even a fertility goddess!" Aphrodite railed. "Look at that damn plant!" She pointed sharply to the windowsill, a nondescript clump of dry, yellow leaves poking over the rim of a pot. 

Peitho sucked the coil of gum off her finger. "Are you gonna water that thing or…"

Aphrodite flapped dismissively at her and stuck her nose into the magazine, her blazing, violet eyes scanning the page with militaristic precision. 

Peitho eyed Aphrodite, jaw rolling as she chewed. She tickled Aphrodite’s calf with her toe. “Should I not have brought it? I figured you'd want to see it."

"Oh, I do." Aphrodite snarled into the pages. "I am finding this a fucking fascinating read." She turned the magazine to show Peitho a jumble of pictures of her talking to different guests, all shot at strategic angles and moments to make it look like she was standing closer than she was, giving them salacious, seductive looks. "Look at what this total asshat Apollo said." She put on a pantomime of a deep, smarmy voice. " _ 'Oh, now, I wouldn't want to speak for the lady, but I think we have chemistry. Guess we'll just have to see where the wind blows' _ . I'll tell you where the wind is blowing, Apollo, UP YOUR BUTT!" 

Peitho slipped her finger over her lips to contain her snicker. She watched Aphrodite with sparkling, mirthful eyes, as the enraged goddess seethed on. 

"Oh, but Apollo, don't get ahead of yourself, because apparently I'm romancing your sister and your roommate!  _ 'The Lady of Cyprus certainly has a knack for ensnaring even the most elusive of prey. Prominent TGOEM member and feared Queen of the Hunt, Artemis, and confirmed bachelor and playboy, Hermes, both seem to be under this goddess’ love spell.’ _ It was a compliment and a corsage, not a fucking marriage proposal!  _ ‘With such temptation close to home, targeting both her members and potential recruits, there’s no wonder that TGOEM head and sexual morality activist, Hestia, is worried.’ _ Now, this is where it gets really fucking good.” She put on a snooty, quavering voice and mimed clutching a pearl necklace. “ _ ‘Aphrodite has her work and none of us want to stand in its way. If the mortals need her to get some of their baser instincts out of their system, then maybe that’s healthy. But we need to consider, in this case, how wise it is to mix business and pleasure. Olympus is a close community, we’ve all fought and worked hard to form a solid and functional pantheon. There are understandable concerns that Aphrodite’s zeal for tinkering with personal relationships is going to disrupt a balance she was never any help in creating.’  _ Functional my ass, you stuck-up hypocrite! The literal first conversation we had was about how the current system DOESN’T WORK! And here I am, trying to offer some alternatives, and suddenly it’s time to run for cover!” She rattled the magazine like a bullroarer. “And now for the piece de resistance!  _ ‘But all of these catches and comments pale in comparison to Aphrodite’s real prize for the day. It seems Olympus’ newest resident is a big game hunter, with not one, but two royal men vying for her oh-so-demanded attention. It’s no secret that the relationship between the king and his only son has long been strained. Doubtless the family is only going to see more drama, now that the bull and the calf are competing for the same cow.’ _ COW!” She flung  _ Panoptes  _ away with a violent lash of her hand. It landed in a flurry of rich rainbows on the carpet, still open on the double page, the sun falling on two photographs side by side: one of Zeus leering at her as she looked heatedly into his eyes, Demeter conveniently cropped from the image, and one of her and Ares laughing together, their eyes connected and sparkling. 

She bundled herself up on the couch, squashing her belly with crossed arms, and glared furiously at her knees, grinding her teeth to powder. Every inch of her flesh felt like it was buried under hot, itchy wool.

Peitho blew a large, pink bubble and popped it, the noise echoing in the simmering silence. Aphrodite felt her flamingo eyes on her, wide and sly and only somewhat sympathetic. Peitho moved her foot and tickled Aphrodite’s toes with hers.

Aphrodite stamped on her painlessly. 

Peitho popped her gum between her molars. “The only bad press is no press. Coverage like this just means you have them running scared.”

Aphrodite raked her long fingers through her sweep of hair, her glower tinted with tiredness. “I didn’t want anyone to run scared. The point wasn’t to show up here and bare my fangs.”

“What was the point then?” Peitho fidgeted her foot crushed by Aphrodite’s into the cushions, stroking her sole with her toe.

Aphrodite gave her an indulgent look, then released her foot and braided their lower legs together again. She looked down at the twine of pink and lavender, still hugging herself, feeling the warmth of Peitho’s skin and the easy pressure of her confident contact. “It was this,” she sighed, indicating their simple touch. “Stern judgement and proper society and rigid status, it’s put all these walls up around people that were never meant to be there. People don’t touch anymore, they don’t catch each other’s eyes and smile, they don’t huddle together by bonfires, they don’t kiss just for the sake of kissing. Everything’s about the implications now. Are you rich enough to speak, are you pretty enough to flirt, are you well-behaved enough to be trusted.” She flicked her eyes up. “And, no, I am obviously not mourning in the way grabby, self-important dicks do, ‘Oh, you can’t do anything without a lawsuit these days.’ Fuck them, ask permission. But in the ocean, the only thing that kept you from intimacy with someone was if the current took you the other way, either by chance or them pushing it. Here, there’s a million and one reasons why every interaction and attraction could get you shut out of society.” She dropped her head onto the cushions and gazed wistfully. “I came here because it needed the wilds.”

Peitho smiled, her chaos of ringlets twirling around her plump cheeks. “Boss, don’t you get it? That’s what people are scared of.”

“But  _ why _ ?” Aphrodite whined.

“What story ever went well where someone wandered into the wilds?”

Aphrodite grinned. “Yeah, but what story ever happened at all if someone didn’t wander into the wilds?” She pointed her toe and drew it in a long, sensual stroke down Peitho’s calf, sipping a soupçon of her sweet, awakened arousal on the air. She lowered her voice to a devious whisper. “Who doesn’t like a good story?”

Peitho burst into giggles and parried Aphrodite’s seductive stroke with a swift kick into the air. “You don’t!” She lunged forward and snatched up the crumpled magazine. “Since you’re throwing this across the room!”

Aphrodite gasped in mock incredulity. “That is not a good story! That is trash!”

Peitho snapped open the magazine and bellowed out the final paragraph. _ “‘Olympus has always been a hub for complex and contentious figures, but has any god ever had so many faces as Aphrodite? Sweet, but sharp, merciful, but ruthless, bold, but retreating, charismatic, but cold. In only one afternoon, we saw the Lady show as many personalities as she has epithets. What remains to be seen, were any of them the real one? Indeed, is there even a real one left under her layers of performance? This reporter and his readers have much left to discover.’ _ ” She smacked the magazine into her lap. “This is gold.”

“He calls me two-faced!” Aphrodite insisted, bristling.

“He calls you unreadable,” Peitho corrected with a cunning, cobra hiss under her words. “Aphrodite of the endless epithets, Aphrodite beyond labels, Aphrodite who doesn’t fit into the boxes he uses for all other gods.” She beamed triumphantly. “This. Is. Gold.”

Aphrodite held Peitho’s eye. The Goddess of Seduction was young and daring and flighty. She courted controversy and revelled in disapproval. Her irises were full of fireworks and her mouth was never still. Aphrodite had been able to sense the rebellion in her from the moment they’d met. It was one of the main reasons she’d brought her on board. Aphrodite had known, under her aloof exterior, that she was going to need someone to show up whenever her fire dwindled, someone with a bottle of kerosene and a maniacal smile. 

“You care too much,” Peitho said smartly, as if reading Aphrodite’s thoughts.

Aphrodite clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes, but snuggled her legs into Peitho’s, seeking her warmth.

“You do,” Peitho pressed. “You wanted to turn up here and be sexy and have all these great ‘free love’ ideas and have everyone be like ‘Oh My Fates, what an icon, sign my tits!’” She pinched the front of her bra through her tight t-shirt and jiggled her breasts comically.

Aphrodite screeched a laugh and threw a cushion at her. “I did not!”

Peitho caught the cushion and threw it back, hitting Aphrodite full in the face and making her flush dizzy. “You so did! The mortals adore you, the ocean thinks you’re awesome. You’re not used to how it is on Olympus, where it’s suspicion first. No, worse, shoot first, then chew over your suspicion later, until you’ve justified yourself.”

“But why is it like that?” Aphrodite groaned, casting her hand up helplessly.

Peitho reached out and caught her hand, enveloping her instantly in a cosy heat. She looked deeply and delightedly into her eyes, like a fortune teller finding someone tangled in the threads of fate. “Because they need you.”

The scratching frustration sputtered out in Aphrodite’s body. She let herself settle into the merriment of Peitho’s stare, mischievous and affectionate and so ready for anything. She folded her hand around hers and clutched it tight. The goddesses smiled at each other. 

“They need  _ us _ ,” Aphrodite said softly.

Peitho grinned like a monkey. “Oh no, you’re the one with the higher purpose. I’m just here to cause trouble.”

Aphrodite laughed, the sensation of it bouncing through her insides and snapping the cords of tension. “You know what? That might be better.”

Peitho flashed her glinting teeth. “You bet it is.” She squeezed her hand, then released it and sprang to her feet, wriggling in the compressing wrapping of her miniskirt to wrench the hem straight on her chubby thighs. “Now,” she said brightly, “let’s get you out of this house.”

*

The Mount Olympus Mall was a city within a city. If Olympus was a polished, opulent metropolis, then the mall was its essence distilled. The wide, white-tiled streets shone, as if the shoppers walked on moonbeams. Great circles were carved out of the upper floors and rimmed with golden railing, so you could look down through layers and layers of bustling extravagance. The rivers of people were broken up by round, open areas, filled with gushing fountains spitting diamond water, surrounded by elegant, marble statues, and lush, potted palm trees. The walkways were long and wide with slow, arcing bends, so at any given moment the fullest possible view of the grand interior overwhelmed the eye. Opalescent light blazed from the prismatic, glass ceiling, baffling all good, money-saving judgement. Not every store was expensive, but every storefront was designed to appear so. Vast, spotless panes of glass revealed microcosms of light and colour and crowding curiosities; terrariums of treats. More glass gleamed in the streets - counters packed with tempting desserts or refreshing juices or steaming hot snacks. The air was thick with the scents of sugar and batter, crushed berries and ice, cleaning fluids and packet sauces. 

Aphrodite and Peitho linked arms and strutted through the swarm of lively shoppers. They smiled dazzlingly straight ahead of them, their supernatural senses gleefully informing them of every stolen glance and open gawp, every dropped milkshake and lifted pair of glasses and rowdy eruption from a group. Their hair cascaded behind them, swishing in slow motion in time with the seductive sway of their joined hips. Bare arms, bare legs, bare, soft bellies, they let their jewel-like skin glow in the riot of glass-sieved sunshine and electric light, twin meteors spinning every fellow body that they passed. 

Aphrodite plunged into the orchestra of emotion. Girls buying their first bras and blushing at themselves in the mirror. Nervous second dates, brains ticking with the timing of when in the movie to try holding hands. Families falling over each other, as children raced towards every possible new toy. Hordes of teenagers splashing in the fountains and the few hours of freedom. People buying gifts. People treating themselves. People turning over a new leaf with a new wardrobe. People at work thinking about their dogs and their partners and their friends with benefits. People craving a cigarette. People thinking about sex. People buying engagement rings and lipsticks and menstrual products and music. People flaunting their style. People staring at each other across a river of blurred faces. People making wishes and feeling selfish for a little while and imagining themselves looking hot. People eating too much. People getting their hair dyed and their legs waxed and their ears pierced. Two women in the bathroom they were passing were meeting and exchanging shy compliments on each other’s eyeliner wing. Someone in that shoe store was testing out heels for stepping on a broad, heaving chest. That guy had just got his soulmate’s phone number. That kid was going to pass that teddy bear onto their own child one day. Aphrodite eased herself into the satisfying, joint motion of walking with Peitho, and gorged on Olympus at its most liberated. Nowhere was more anonymous than a huge crowd. And nowhere was more disorientating. It dismantled defences. There was no hiding from a love goddess here.

Peitho was right, getting out of the house was good for her. She’d spent so much time mired in the pantheon, it was too easy to forget that there was so much more to this realm than that tiny cohort. Her spirits not only lifted, they flowed out into the hive of energetic activity. 

Peitho took advantage of her own shortness and bobbed her lips to Aphrodite’s shoulder, her cutesy kiss sending a pleasant skipping sensation down Aphrodite’s arm. “Feel better?” she asked knowingly.

“If I say yes, you can’t be full of yourself about it.” Aphrodite shot her an equally knowing, sideways glance.

Peitho stuck her long, pink tongue out. She tightened the crook of her elbow around Aphrodite’s and steered her forward. “We should get frozen yoghurt.”

Aphrodite snorted. “We should get full fat ice cream.”

“With sprinkles!”

“With fucking everything.”

They let out shrill, chiming giggles and coursed through the crowd, cutting through it like sharks parting shoals of fish. They settled themselves at one of the dessert bars tucked neatly into the edge of one of the round hubs. The glittering floor and ceiling caught in the flinging droplets from the marble fountain in the centre of the hub, the emerald foliage around it turning it into an oasis from the hot, hurried streets. 

Aphrodite gave Peitho her order and stayed at the table to guard the bundle of crisp, pastel shopping bags they were carrying between them. The tables were tall, surrounded by bar stools. Aphrodite tucked her dangling ankles one behind the other and leaned her cheek in her hand. She gazed over at the fountain, the churn of fresh, sparkling water strumming her heartstrings with bittersweet thoughts of home. She sighed, trying to breath the purifying scent of the sea, and instead getting glace cherries and body spray. Her eyes wandered to the fountain edge. Two adolescent nymph boys were sitting on it, periodically splashing each other, their sweeping fringes sprinkled wet. One of them was alarmingly scrawny and had a bulbous zit on his upper lip. One of them had chewed fingernails and a lingering crust of infection around a new nose ring. They were looking at each other like they’d never seen anything more beautiful in the entire world. 

Aphrodite smiled. She subtly extended a finger towards them and moved it softly to draw a heart in the air around their faces.

_ Blessings sought and blessings given, _

_ Doubt not and ne’er be riven. _

A lilac shimmer passed across her vision. The boys’ smiles lost their flippancy. They leaned in and kissed.

Aphrodite hummed and shimmied her shoulders.

_ That was nice. _

“Are you meddling?” Peitho’s perpetually amused voice broke into her daydream. 

She looked up to see Peitho hoisting herself with difficulty onto the too-high bar stool opposite. Two large, cardboard tubs had been placed on the table, stuffed with fat, glistening scoops of sultry strawberry and luxurious chocolate ice cream, dressed flamboyantly with chocolate shavings, rainbow sprinkles, chopped hazelnuts, puffed mini marshmallows, tiny golden sugar balls, gem-like cherries, and draped sashes of sticky sauce. The one nearest Aphrodite had a purple, plastic spoon sticking out of it, Peitho’s was pink.

“It’s my job to meddle,” Aphrodite said, sliding the treasure trove of sweets closer and tugging out the spoon. It gummed into the thick dairy and slid out slowly and satisfyingly. 

“You’re on break.” Peitho finally wiggled herself into a comfortable spot, her lime green heels kicking in mid-air. She extracted her spoon and took a squidgy mound of ice cream into her mouth, sucking so her full lips caught the light. 

Aphrodite smiled around her bite of cherry.

“I was gonna get vanilla too,” Peitho said, scooping another spoonful. “But let’s face it, vanilla’s not our brand.”

Aphrodite chuckled. “Damn right.” She took a mouthful from where the chocolate and strawberry swirled together. She let it sit on her tongue, melting over it and pouring sweetness and cold into her mouth. Her jaw ached with it, it tingled behind her eyes and in her sinuses. She crunched on hazelnut and hard sugar, new subtleties of flavour popping on her taste buds. “Mmmph, I needed that.”

Peitho rolled her eyes back into her head in blissful agreement. “It’s hot in here, huh?”

“It’s all the bodies,” Aphrodite said in a slightly far-away voice. “Malls are just one big, sweaty mass of people who can’t cool off, no matter what they try.” She eyed the boys, who were splashing each other and laughing again. “I love it.”

“You’re so weird,” Peitho remarked. “It’s great.”

Aphrodite grinned around her spoon and sucked another slippery spoonful of strawberry smush between her teeth.

“So,” Peitho said with a purposeful smack of her lips, “don’t hate me, but…” She reached into her bag, slung on her shoulder still, and drew out a crumpled roll of glossy paper. She unfurled it on the table between them.

Aphrodite’s face fell, as the  _ Panoptes  _ article flopped into view. “Why?” she asked, her nostrils flaring.

“I have to ask about one thing in here,” Peitho pushed. She spun the magazine around and planted her finger on one of the photographs. 

Aphrodite’s cheeks tingled warm, warring with the ice cream. She kept her face impassive. “Yes?”

Peitho smirked. “All the other pictures in here might just be camera angles, but this one’s a thing, right?”

Aphrodite gnawed on the syrup-sticky, plastic spoon and let her eyes drop to the daffodil face of Ares, riotous with grinning, somehow still vibrantly alive, even in the frozen image. She shrugged.

“Oh, come on!” Peitho protested, her coils of hair springing like slinkies. “The two of you look happier than furies in a torture chamber! No accident could fake that chemistry.”

Aphrodite shovelled a scoop of ice cream the size of a plum into her mouth and gestured helplessly to her plugged lips to indicate she couldn’t comment right now.

Peitho narrowed her eyes at her. “I can wait out that ice cream, Missy.”

Aphrodite gestured at her busy mouth again and batted her eyes innocently.

Peitho threw her head back, her whole body quivering with laughter. She whipped her indignant face back to Aphrodite. “You’re not the only one with magic smut detection powers, you know! Fess up!”

Aphrodite swallowed pointedly and pursed her lips. She folded her forearms on the table and let her head drop a little so the cool aura of the ice cream could combat her blush. She avoided Peitho’s keen eye. “He’s super young. Like younger than you. Like it would be irresponsible.”

Peitho blew a raspberry and took a mouthful of oozing chocolate, speaking around it. “We’re immortal beings, you dummy, age is nothing. Next excuse.”

Aphrodite puffed out through her nose and flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t think I should date right now. I’m spinning a lot of plates, I’m still getting used to everything, I…”

Peitho cut her off, mimicking her in a clipped, sing-song, over-articulate voice. “Oh, Peitho, I do so hate how here on Olympus no one gives into their impulses and puts a bunch of walls up and closes themselves off to relationships when there’s an obvious massive spark between them. It hurts my magical, love soul - AH!” Aphrodite had jabbed her spoon forward and stuffed a mound of ice cream into Peitho’s mouth. Peitho swallowed it too fast and began to pant and fan herself furiously. “Aaah! Brain freeze!”

Aphrodite clucked her tongue. “Brought it on yourself.”

“Ugh!” Peitho’s eyes were watering. “You bitch!” 

Aphrodite smirked.

Peitho huffed out the last of the headache and held up the magazine. “He looks like he would love that about you, by the way.”

Aphrodite batted the magazine down and tucked determinedly back into her dessert. “OK, fine. I’m not saying no.” She burst a cherry between her teeth and let the syrup coat her tongue. “But I’m not saying yes either.” She widened her eyes pointedly. “I’m playing the field, remember?”

Peitho laughed and scraped out the last of her tub. She snipped the end of the spoon between her teeth and grinned like a pixie. “Bet he has a gorgeous shlong.”

Aphrodite snapped her gaze up to retort, then broke into a glowing smile. “Yeah, I bet he does too.”

The two of them exploded into giggles, echoing off the hard, shining surfaces around them. 

“Having a good time, ladies?” A pleasant, lazy voice cut in.

Aphrodite and Peitho breathed themselves back to some level of sobriety and looked over to see one of the waitresses pausing at their table. She was a cherry coloured nymph with hair like whipped cream piled in a messy swirl on top of her head and tangled around a stub of a pencil behind her long ear. The pink shirt of her uniform was tied up above her belly button, where a scarlet, zircon stud glittered. She was carrying a tray of used tubs gracefully in one hand. Aphrodite felt Peitho’s senses zero in on the waitress. She pressed her lips together to conceal her smile.

“We are having a super nice time,” Peitho replied in a tone between warmth and craftiness, as if there was some secret, dirty reason for them to be enjoying themselves. 

“Good.” The waitress grinned, one ear flicking, as she tilted her head to regard Peitho. “Can I take these for you?”

“Oh, sure.” Peitho popped her empty tub onto the tray. 

The waitress reached for Aphrodite’s, still with a good amount of goop in the bottom. 

Aphrodite closed her fingers on it. “You can pry this from my cold, dead hands.”

The waitress laughed and put her hand up in mock surrender.

“Busy day, huh?” Peitho asked, threading just the right amount of concern into her jovial tone.

The waitress sighed and nodded, still smiling. “It’s crazy. I’ve been on shift since breakfast.”

“Ice cream for breakfast!” Peitho giggled spiritedly. She put her hands on her knees to bunch up her breasts and shoulders, arching her spine, all perkiness and invitation. “The dream!”

The waitress blew out through her lips. “I wish. After this many hours serving it, it loses its magic.”

Peitho pouted in sympathy, rounding her candy mouth. She let a pink ringlet fall over her eye and leaned surreptitiously closer to the waitress. “I’m sure there’s a way to rekindle the magic for you. When do you get off?”

Aphrodite leaned her chin in her hand and slipped her fingers over her smirk, eyes flitting between them. 

The waitress gave Peitho a suspicious look that melted into interest. “Actually, this is my last round of the tables.”

“Lucky you.” Peitho smiled devilishly.

The waitress cocked an eyebrow and showed her canines. “Lucky you.” She held Peitho’s eye, as she walked away.

Peitho looked back to Aphrodite victoriously. 

Aphrodite pinched her fingers by her lips and kissed the air with a flourishing gesture. “Masterful. Bellissima.”

“Thank you, thank you.” Peitho mimed bowing to an imaginary applauding audience. Then she winced. “Though, ah, I was supposed to be being a good friend and shit.”

Aphrodite laughed through her nose and looked at Peitho like she was a toddler asking to keep a stray mouse. “You’ve been a great friend. Go have fun.”

“You sure you’ll be OK?”

“I’m a big, tough girl. I tie my own sandals and everything.” Aphrodite flexed her bicep. 

Peitho pressed her hands together in a supplicating gesture and hopped from her stool. She snatched up her bags and scurried off to the counter, where the waitress was wiping down the tray and pretending not to be waiting for her. Aphrodite smiled after them. She blew them a subtle kiss.

_ Instinct followed, be unbound, _

_ Pleasure wanted, pleasure found. _

The girls slipped into the crowd, hands entwining.

Aphrodite took a deep, soothing breath and sucked luxuriantly on a slick of raspberry sauce. Her eyes tried very hard to stay in the beautiful medley of movement, but they somehow ended up back on the magazine. 

_ Playing the field. What’s so wrong with that anyway? Literal king sets fire to literal field: no coverage. New girl goes to party and does something other than stand in the corner: centrefold spread. Woman makes more than one facial expression amongst group of almost strangers: two-faced. _

Cooling, smooth cream trickled down her throat, leaving a trail of sensation, like butterfly kisses. Her eyes wandered to the photograph of Ares, to the startling enjoyment in her own face. She thought about the car, about his wicked grin, his warm hand, the way his chest rose up when he was saying something important, the way the engine thrummed under his touch. Her fingertip traced the line of his jaw. 

She shook her head and looked up sharply from the magazine.

Her eyes collided with a bright streak of marigold, dashed with blood red. A tall, hulking figure was rounding the dessert stand, his mop of custard curls looking like a fourth scoop on the large, model ice cream on the counter.

Her stomach flipped. A stream of dry laughter surged up her chest.

_ You have got to be kidding me. _

Of all the people in all the ice cream places...

Ares was here.

He lumbered into the jumble of bar stools, seemingly taking a shortcut. He was wearing scuffed up jeans and boots and a black t-shirt that rumpled around his hips. The bright lights blazed on his golden skin and the punk flash across his eyes. He looked like a walking electrocution. Aphrodite instinctively squeezed between her thighs, a warm, melting sensation in her lower body. Her feet rubbed against each other. 

What was he doing here? Today was supposed to be a detox from Olympus drama. She wasn't supposed to have to think about a cute, definitely too young guy and what to do to about his royal baggage and whether it was too risky and irresponsible to… suck his bottom lip like toffee. 

Shit, it looked like toffee. 

_ Please see me. Please don't see me. Please see me. Please don't see me. Please see me. Please don't -  _

"Ares!" Her voice echoed off the glass, like the striking of a tuning fork. 

_ Whoops. _

Ares halted and looked around. His amber eyes scanned the tables, while her heartbeat hiccupped and sped. When he spotted her, the fixed sullen expression on his hard face dissolved. That tempting, toffee mouth softened into a smile. Aphrodite clenched her stomach against another surge of attraction, and waved, shifting her face to a warm but coy look. 

Ares mirrored the reserved expression with a mocking twist to his lips. He put his hands in his pockets and lazily sloped over, every movement flowing from his mountainous shoulders. The kind of shoulders you could sink your fingernails into for a rodeo ride… 

_ Fates, Woman, control yourself.  _

Ares reached her table. He was significantly taller than her, even with her on the bar stool. 

He leaned one elbow on the table, his curls bouncing in his eyes and his teeth emerging. "Hey."

Aphrodite smiled, a teasing twinkle in her eye. "Hello." 

He eyed her playfully. "You know, you look kinda familiar."

"Really?" 

"Yeah. You famous or something?"

“A tad, not like royal famous.”

“Huh. Can't place you.”

Aphrodite grinned. She held up a finger to tell him to wait, then scooped her hair on top of her head, pinned it with one hand, and held the magazine peppered with pictures of her fancy up-do next to her face. "This jogging your memory?"

Ares squinted at her and scratched his chin. "Uuuh. Nope, sorry, no clue."

"Seriously?" 

"That's actually made it worse." 

Aphrodite nodded with a theatrical sigh and dropped her hair and the magazine. "I've just got one of those faces." 

"That must be it." He shrugged. He took the magazine, his eyes roving around the pictures. He flipped it and tapped the photograph of the two of them together, smiling. "Cute one of us."

Aphrodite's pulse skipped. "Isn't it? And you'd never guess the criminal behaviour coming."

He grinned and leaned deeper on the table. "Disagree, you have jailbird written all over you there. I look innocent as fuck though, look at that baby face." He flicked his wrist and tossed the pages back onto the table. "They give you another ass-kissing write-up?" 

Aphrodite tossed her hair briskly. "I think they’re done kissing my ass." 

"How? Are they blind?" Ares shot her a deeply suggestive smile. His face was far too close. She gave him a reproachful smirk, her core squeezing again. He broke her gaze and picked up  _ Panoptes _ . His brow furrowed a little more seriously, as his sharp eyes darted back and forth. She saw his jaw stiffen and a muscle in his arm rise. But his voice was dismissive when he snorted and dropped the magazine again. "Wow. Talk about bottom of the barrel." 

Aphrodite rolled her eyes in agreement. "Right?" 

"Was there this little news last week?" 

"As Acteon will forever punish me for saying, this isn’t a newspaper." 

He let out a curt laugh, like the sound of a pistol being loaded. "And dang, I’m fighting my dad for you?" 

"Looks like it." 

"That passed me by." 

She drew herself up haughtily and took a bored, goading tone. “Well, he’s buying me my weight in diamonds, so you better get your wallet ready to retaliate.”

Ares huffed out, looking stumped. “Ice cream?”

“Just had some.”

“Fuck. I’m screwed then.” He made a show of standing straight and making as if to leave.

She flapped at him hastily. “No! Please think of something, that swan beak looks super painful on the coochie.”

She saw his face flicker microscopically, but he kept his joker air. “Oh, are you not supposed to pinch it? Learn something new every day.”

Laughter kicked out of her, casting her hair back in a pastel burst. She caught his eye, bright from his grin. She cleared her throat and sobered. “Sorry, poor taste joke.”

He shook his head, still grinning. “My favourite kind.”

She looked down with a smile. Her eyes pulled back up, meeting his. She felt like she was stroking her fingers through a candle flame. He held her eye with ease, confrontation as natural to him as breathing. It made her feel armed, energised.

His gaze flicked over her shoulder, then widened. He looked back at her with the sun dancing in his pupils. “Hey, found something I can win you with.”

She arched her eyebrow sceptically. He bit his lip and darted around her, striding off with a spring in his weighty step. Her instincts told her that she ought to stay on the bar stool like a queen and wait to be presented with something. But fuck that, she was full of popping bubbles. She scrambled off her seat, snatched up the two shopping bags at her feet, and tottered speedily after him. He led her past the palm trees and to a wide toy store window, dressed in an under the sea theme with blue streamers and balloons, sunken treasure chests full of action figures, and cuddly squids and fish dangling from strings. The centre of the display was dominated by an absolutely massive, baby blue dolphin plushy, easily the size of a human child, with wonky fins and a deranged sparkle stitched into its eye.

Ares spun on his heel and fanned his fingers. “Ta da!”

Aphrodite wrinkled her nose and folded her arms. “May I remind you that the standard I set was my weight in diamonds.”

Ares shrugged. “This thing looks heavy.”

“You’ve entirely missed the diamonds point.”

Ares folded his arms too, his biceps stretching his sleeves. He leaned on the window. “This is a quality romantic gift. Diamonds are generic. This has relevance to where you grew up. This is the kinda gift that says ‘I’m a man who listens.’”

She put her hands smartly on her hips. “This is a gift that says ‘I’m a man who wants to put an aggressively huge stuffed animal in your house, so you always have to be looking at something I got you.’”

“Please,” Ares scoffed, “if I wanted you to think about me when I wasn’t around, I’d just mysteriously make out with you in a beautiful garden or some shit.”

She looked at him flatly. “Foolproof.”

He bounced his eyebrow and grinned. 

She narrowed her eyes through her smile.  _ Cocky _ .

He pushed off from the glass, slid his hands into his pockets, and ambled around her, brushing close. 

She turned as he passed her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m a man of my word.” He headed for the toy store door.

“Don’t you dare burden me with that dolphin.”

He threw her a gremlin grin over his shoulder.

“Ares, if you come out of that store with that damn dolphin, I will curse you.”

His grin broadened. 

“I will give you the pheromones that attract mosquitos.”

He vanished through the door.

Aphrodite huffed indignantly over a jet of giggles. She started to march towards the door, heels clopping loudly on the tiled floor. She stopped in her tracks and marched back to the window, cheeks tingling. She tapped her foot like a ticking metronome, narrowing her eyes at the blank, goofy smile of the dolphin. 

_ He’s bluffing. _

The painted backboard of the display rocked. Aphrodite perked up and went slack-jawed, as a nymph in a red polo shirt wriggled around the edge of it, scooped the enormous plushy into her arms, and unhooked it from its suspending strings. She struggled with it back around the backboard, rocking it more.

_ Oh no… _

Aphrodite skidded to the door and craned her neck to peek over the “open” sign through the glass. A thickset security guard was in the way. She paced further off from the door, sucking her teeth.

The door opened. Ares emerged. Or rather, Ares’ legs emerged, his top half entirely concealed by a gift bag the size of an armchair. 

Aphrodite gaped. “You didn’t!”

Ares lowered the bag to the floor between them, his face appearing, beaming and wicked. “Have at it. Suck it, Dad.”

Aphrodite glared at him. She dived to the bag. It was brimming with blue tissue paper. She tore through it like a raccoon rooting through trash. A layer of tissue paper fluttered away. Then another. Then another. 

“What the…”

Another layer. And another. She had now excavated down so low in the bag that she was disappearing into it, like an ostrich. She cast the final shimmery sheet behind her and stood straight again, among the mess of blue waves, like when she rose from the sea, holding in her hand a plushy dolphin keyring. 

She shot her eyes up to Ares. 

He gave her an extremely self-satisfied smile.

“Again,” she said, “the standard was my weight in diamonds.”

“Hey, if you don’t want it.” He snatched it out of her hand.

“I didn’t say that!” She tried to snatch it back.

Ares held the keyring aloft, all his teeth on display, his voice rumbling with mischief. “No, you had your chance. Get swan-fucked. See if I care.”

“I am NOT getting swan-fucked.” She swiped.

He dodged. “PINCH!”

“NO PINCH!” she yapped and jumped for it.

He sprang back, cackling. “PEEEEENCH!”

“Ares!” She pounced after him, rising to hover in the air with her pointed toes kicking. “That was a gift! Give it!”

“Nope!” He stretched his hand as far from her as possible, shielding against her with his other forearm, as her body swarmed him like bats, grabbing for the keyring.

They tangled in the busy walkway, people skirting them with irritable and amused glances, as Ares skidded around to avoid the flying Aphrodite’s violent swipes for his hand, her hair in a whirl about him, her scent piling onto him and making him dizzy and delirious. He laughed demonically and kept dodging her, kept leading her on, every brush of her skin on his leaving a static prickle. Her playful anger showered him with cinnamon.

“Ares! GIVE IT!” 

She swooped to his back and plastered to him, her softness squishing to his back, her bare thighs clamping his waist. Her arm looped around his chest. His heart stopped. He toppled and caught himself with a bark. She lunged over him and snatched the tiny dolphin, scratching his palm lightly with her fingernails. 

She clung to him like a koala and thrust her fist into the air with a howl of triumph. “Yes! The God of War is defeated!”

Ares shook with laughter, revelling in how she bounced on his back and gripped his body. He hooked his hands under her thighs and hoisted her to settle around his waist. She was pleasantly heavy, calling to his strength. She wriggled a little, striking heat up under his collar. 

“Stop fidgeting,” he chuckled.

“I’m displaying my prize,” she said. 

He glanced down to where her white, leather purse nudged his hip. She was clipping the dolphin to it. It dangled there with a goofy, affectionate smile. He grinned. She clasped her hands on his chest, hanging onto his shoulders and shuffling her weight securely into his arms. She tossed her hair out of her face. “Right, don’t forget my bags.”

“I’m sorry, are you under the impression you’re getting a ride now?” Ares asked over his shoulder.

“My feet hurt,” Aphrodite said, as if that settled it immediately.

It did. Ares shrugged and nodded and hugged her thighs a little closer to his waist. He turned to her thankfully small pair of shopping bags, bent, and hooked them in his teeth. He stood straight again and grumbled around the string handles. Aphrodite unhooked them from his mouth and reclasped her hands, the light bags resting on his torso.

“OK, where to?” Ares asked cheerfully.

“Perfume store.”

“Which one?”

“Delphi’s Vapours.”

“I have no idea where that is.” 

She gave him a small squeeze. “I’ll just tap whichever arm you need to turn towards.”

“And my ass to go forward?”

“That works.” She bumped her stiletto against his ass. “Giddy up, Pony.”

Ares blew out through his lips, like a horse, and set off down the milk and honey street of the mall, leaving a lagoon of abandoned tissue paper behind them. He lounged in his gait, drawing out the journey, keeping his body tense to hold Aphrodite up, working constantly to resist collapsing into her snuggle against his back. Her breath tickled his ear. The muscles in her thighs moved against his fingers and filled his palms. Her fat was cosy and enveloped him in warmth. 

Aphrodite let herself sink into Ares’ cradling strength, his large hands and broad back like a raft over the coursing hubbub of the mall. His heat should have been uncomfortable, with the sunbeams spearing the glass roof, but it wasn’t. It was relaxing. She felt coated in the heady, vanilla liquid of a massage candle. He walked with an easy, slow rhythm, like a bear, like a rowboat. His hands held her thighs with a slight unstillness. Every time his fingers moved, a tingle sneaked under her skirt. She subtly turned her nose to his soft curls. His shampoo was orange-scented. She sucked her tongue. She’d barely have to move her head an inch to nibble his ear.

“So, what were you here for, before I showed up and gave you something better to do?” she asked breezily, before her wandering senses got the better of her.

“Oh, I was gonna meet Hermes at the arcade,” he replied, turning a corner, as she tapped his left shoulder. “But he bailed.”

“Little flake.”

“Yeah, but also two jobs. Some mortal fell off a cliff doing a stunt for his girlfriend and Hermes had to go collect him.”

Aphrodite tutted.

“Anything to do with you?” Ares dipped his head backwards to catch her eye accusingly.

“Absolutely not!” Aphrodite said indignantly. “Probably.”

Ares snickered and bounced her on his back. 

She steered him to a small shop like a box of sweets set into the wall. The door was ajar, releasing a cloud of dizzying, dark, fruity scents into the air. Ares bent his knees and let Aphrodite hop down, rolling his shoulders to realign his spine. She stepped around him to the door, and he found himself following her close, missing her press to his body instantly.

“If I’m walking from now, I at least can’t be expected to carry these,” she said with her nose in the air. She whipped around and thumped her bags to his chest.

He took them from her without thinking, leaning around her to push the door open for her. She glanced sideways approvingly at him. He tingled. 

“What’s in these?” he asked, moving to peek into the bags.

“Underwear,” she answered.

He perked up. “Can I look?”

“Nope.”

“I am carrying them.”

“Does Hermes open every letter he delivers?”

Ares shut his mouth, then stuck his tongue out. She shook her head and stepped fully into Delphi’s Vapours. Ares squeezed his arms into his sides and tried to make himself smaller. The glittering room was compact and crowded floor to ceiling with shelves and tables of gemstone-coloured boxes and assorted, peculiarly-shaped bottles, all the surfaces so close to each other that one wrong move could collapse the whole store in a domino effect. He hung back and watched Aphrodite float forward in her smooth, fluid gait, slipping into the haze of hypnotic fragrances and sparkles on glass. Her lavender-smoke form made her look like an apparition. His head swam a little. He let it and kept watching her. 

No staff were visible. She perused the tables, occasionally dipping to sniff a bottle like a flower, or spritz a little something onto her wrist, curling her hand back so the fine veins glimmered gold under her skin. 

“What do you think of this one?” She raised her penetrating eyes to him.

He started and eased himself through the complex of tables, the cacophony of scents thickening in his senses. He reached her side and she lifted the inside of her wrist up to his face. He glanced at her, then put his nose to it. The perfume was sweet and spicy and clean, and there was something of the wilds in it. It stole through his whole body, turning his brain to fuzz and making his mouth water. His eyes blurred on her golden veins. What if he kissed the inside of her wrist? Just for fun? Just using the tip of his tongue? What if he kissed all the way down her arm and pulled the strap of her top down with his teeth? No one was around.

“Ares?” Aphrodite snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. 

He blinked rapidly and leaned sharply back from her wrist, his voice coming gruff. “Uh, yeah. It’s nice.”

“You think?” She sniffed it herself. “Not too much?”

He grinned, face heating. “Is too much so bad?”

She darted glittering eyes to him. “Excellent point.”

She tugged his forearm and started to lead him through the fractured rainbow. “Perfume is a powerful thing,” she said in a sultry, soft voice, like she was about to tell a fairytale.

He drifted after her, feeling like he was walking through cobwebs with the layers of eye-prickling scents, jumping every time he wavered on his feet and knocked a delicate display. “Yeah, I’m getting that.”

“You don’t want to cover up the natural scent, that will always be more intoxicating than any concoction.” She sprayed a fresh, floral mist into the air and sniffed it with a critical expression. She replaced the bottle and picked up another, shaped like a beehive. “But the right fragrance can completely ensnare someone. Catch it walking down the street, getting off a train, sitting at your desk, and suddenly you're hooked for life.” She sent another burst of droplets into the air. Honey clogged Ares’ taste buds. She shook her head and switched it for a frosted bottle the shape of a woman’s torso, her thumb stroking thoughtlessly over the curves. “Smell is the strongest memory trigger of all our senses too. There’s this great trick.” She glanced at him mischievously and spritzed the air again, something reminiscent of white wine and cardamom. “Get a new perfume, don’t tell anyone. Absolutely cover yourself in it.” She grinned and lowered her voice, smooth and deep. “And nothing else. Then give your boyfriend a really long, luxurious BJ. Like an hour easily. Just turn him to putty. Melt his mind. Super dirty and sloppy and slow.”

Ares’ knees went weak. Her voice snaked around him, binding him in python coils, entrancing him. He tugged down the suddenly very tight collar of his t-shirt, his throat closing and his skin smouldering. “Uhuh…”

She glistened like the potion bottles around her, as she continued irresistibly. “Then, hide the perfume, don’t put it on again for a week at least. Then wear it for his next office party. He’ll be hard as a statue around his co-workers and bosses and have no idea why. Let him sweat for as long as he can handle, but he won’t make you stay late at the boring night out, and he’ll go craaazy for you the second you get through the door.” She hummed desirously over the end of the sentence and sent a cloud of something head-spinning and delicious into the air. 

It made Ares’ tongue writhe in his mouth and beautifully tormenting images tumble behind his eyes. “That one,” he husked.

Aphrodite smiled at him. “This one?” She held up the crystal bottle shaped like a pomegranate and coloured the fruit’s tempting red.

Ares could barely stand. He was thinking obsessively about getting home from that hypothetical office party. “Uhuh, definitely.”

Her lips bloomed with a look of knowing glee. She inclined her head and held his eye, as she strutted slowly to the counter. Ares watched her ring for assistance and purchase the perfume, chatting sweetly with the shop assistant. There was a film of sweat on his chest and back. His pulse thudded in his flesh. 

Aphrodite returned to him with a small, square, black bag. She hooked it onto his curled fingers with the others. She beckoned him to follow her back onto the indoor street. He obeyed like a spaniel. 

As they re-entered the mall, the daze drained out of Ares’ senses. He blinked and shook his head. He rubbed his prickling eyes and nose. His head cleared. “You damn minx!” he barked.

Aphrodite batted her eyes innocently. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Talking smut in a big cloud of girl perfume and watching me drool!”

Aphrodite smiled deviously and shrugged. “Gotta get my kicks somehow. Your pants still fit?”

Ares growled like a leopard cub, tickled her side, and strode away down the path. She cackled and tripped after him, catching up to him and elbowing his arm. “You’re blushing.”

“Am not.”

“You’re all red.”

“That’s just my face!” He couldn’t keep his laughter in, no matter how he glared at her. 

She beamed up at him. “It’s so bright! I need sunglasses.” 

She pulled him sideways into a white box of a glasses store. In the back of it, a cyclops was having his eye tested by a crisp-lipped nymph in a white coat. Aphrodite skipped to a shelf of sunglasses and slipped on a pair with jet black, circular lenses. When she turned back to Ares he was already in a thick pair that made him look like a cop.

“Oh, Officer,” Aphrodite cooed, “are you here to arrest me?”

Ares cocked his eyebrow. “You been a naughty girl?”

“Not in these.” She swapped her sunglasses for ones with red, rectangular lenses. “There we go.”

Ares grinned. “Leave those on, it’ll be impossible to tell when I’m blushing.”

“You admit it!” She jabbed her pointed finger at him. Then whipped around and switched the red glasses for pink ones shaped like hearts. She spun and posed with a cute wink and peace sign.

Ares put his cop shades back, reached out and plucked the heart glasses off her face. He slid them up his long nose. “These’ll look better on me.” He looked at her through the bubblegum hearts, turning him into an adorable, lovestruck cartoon.

She smiled. “Agreed.” 

He smiled back, looking down at her at the same angle he had done in the photograph of them. She suddenly felt foolish for letting him read that article. He didn’t know her that well, after all, and Acteon was a persuasive writer. Her smile dwindled, as she avoided his eye and looked back into the wall of lenses, her face multiplied in dozens of warped reflections. “I should get two pairs, one for each of my faces. Or more,” she said darkly.

Ares’ brow fell a little. He slid the heart glasses back onto the shelf. “I don’t think you’re two-faced,” he said softly.

Aphrodite puffed out through her nose. “You sure about that?”

“Pretty sure.”

She shot him a villainous look. “Maybe I’ve just got you wrapped around my little finger, like I do all of Olympus' upstanding citizens.”

The corner of his mouth twisted. “Actually, yeah, that’s probably it.” He slipped on a pair of aviators with an almost aggressive sheen across them. He stooped and casually checked himself out in the tiny mirror between the shelves. “You know, there’s nothing really wrong with having multiple faces.”

Aphrodite tilted her head curiously. “You think so?”

He started to muss his fringe in the mirror, continuing in an easy, almost off-hand tone. “You’re a complex person, there’s a lot to you. Not everyone’s owed every aspect of that. Why should they be, right? What have they done to earn it? Show what you want, when you want. That’s your decision.”

Aphrodite stared at him, her heart floating higher in her chest.

He gave up on his untameable hair and scruffed it up on purpose. He turned to her and raised his eyebrows over the steely aviators. “What?”

She looked away hurriedly, smiling and tucking her hair behind her ear. “Nothing.” She exhaled in relief and giggled. “That was very profound for a guy who looks like he runs a low-end porn studio.”

“Not pulling these off?”

“The hearts looked better.”

“Hang on.” He restored the heart sunglasses, pink streaking onto his cheeks and softening the red flare. “Hey, do something hot.”

She gave him a proud look. “I’m going to just stand here, that’s sufficient.”

Ares gawped exaggeratedly at her, slipped his fingers behind his ears, and poked the sunglasses forward and back, like his heart-eyes were popping out at her. She burst into uproarious laughter and prodded them firmly onto the bridge of his nose. He boomed a laugh and batted her away. They drew several sharp, bespectacled eyes, as they put the glasses back and stumbled out of the store, jostling each other and talking over each other to get the last word.

Neither of them really made the decision to spend the day together, it just sort of... happened. They were carried along on the current of the mall, Aphrodite bubbly with the mess of crushes and families and treats, Ares thrumming with the heat and the spats and the frustrations of daily inconveniences. It made him scrappy, but in a way he enjoyed. He wasn’t really picking fights with Aphrodite, but every chance he got to tease her just a little too far, he took like a Jack Russel with a chew toy. She responded to it delightfully. Most people snapped straight away, giving him a single shot of anger to see him through the next couple of hours. Aphrodite laughed and teased him back, chased him and escaped him, turned everything into a tango, pricked him all over with tiny sparks of indignation and combativeness, until he felt like a cactus. Aphrodite was like acupuncture. His body felt as gripped as it did relaxed. She was always touching him; petting his arm, cuffing his abs, pinching his shoulder, nudging his side. It was addictive. He found himself never walking more than two inches from her, staying resolutely in reach. He used her thoughtless touches as an excuse to touch her back, less than she did him, but just enough to keep his pulse up. Just enough to get high on the unthinkable privilege of being allowed.

She led the way, Ares watching fascinated, as he gained a variety of new insights into the processes of shopping for oneself. She took him to a make-up store and he watched with interest, as she dusted different blushes onto her hand, then did the same to him with bronzers, which were apparently different things. They weaved around the shelves of a book store, peeking at each other through gaps in the spines, Ares making a whole thing out of lifting ones down for her from the tops of the cases. She read him her favourite poem. He sank into her flowing, happy voice, leaned on a bookcase, and nearly knocked it over, a few volumes thudding to the floor and letting out bursts of the homey smell of paper. They went into a gleaming, creepily silent jewellery store where everything was perpendicular to each other and sealed behind glass, playing a game of who could make the security guard move first, without actually doing a crime. They tried on hats and masks and feather boas. They flopped together onto the beds in furniture stores to rate how much bounce they could take, then they played hide and seek around the showrooms. Everything was nonsense and laughter and teasing questions that led to pleasing titbits of new knowledge about each other. Aphrodite liked to swim. Ares hated rain. Aphrodite used to have a pet lobster, but it was so lazy she didn't notice when it had been dead for three days. Ares was a terrible singer, but loved karaoke. Aphrodite's favourite time of day was sunset. Ares had spiked the punch at his high school prom. It all came dancing out of them to the music of the bustling mall.

They dropped into a slower pace, Ares now carrying several bags for Aphrodite, his t-shirt gumming to his back with the heat of the crowds and the perpetual aliveness of his skin while she was near. They ambled past a large clothing store, Penelope’s Weaving, the windows stretching right up to the next floor. In one spanning pane, spindly, abstract mannequins twisted around each other in party clothes, surrounded by vintage sewing machines. The other was curtained by two vast, black and white posters advertising jeans, one with a topless nymph woman, hugging her breasts to conceal them and looking with smoky longing into the camera, one with a topless nymph man raising one arm behind his head and smiling cheekily down at his lithe, defined torso.

Aphrodite and Ares paused at the posters, their heads cocking to the side in unison, as they took in the view of the models. 

“You ever think about me naked?” Ares asked casually, still looking at the sliver of the male nymph’s briefs above the low-riding jeans.

Aphrodite glanced coyly at him. “I think about everybody naked, where do you think my confidence comes from?”

He glanced too. “I think about you naked.”

She bit her lip. “Everyone thinks about me naked, where do you think my confidence comes from?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, but I bet I do it the most.”

“That's an odd thing to be competitive about.”

“My curse, I'm afraid.”

She rocked closer to him and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Are you doing it right now?”

“Competing?”

“Thinking about me naked.”

He let out a devilish half-grin. “Oh yeah, literally all day.”

She shook her hair out and looked smugly straight ahead. “Good.” She sashayed into the store.

Ares fell naturally back into spaniel mode, lumbering after Aphrodite, as her sharp eyes scanned and judged the garments that unfolded before them. She made decisions with a level of cool precision that he’d only seen in Athena.

“You put a lot of thought into clothes, huh?” he asked, watching her hold up two seemingly identical dresses, then put one back and sling the other over her shoulder, the hanger hooked on her finger.

“Obviously,” she replied, now running her hand over the seam of a shirt. “Any day you like what you see in the mirror is off to a good start.”

Ares twinged. “What’s that like?”

She shot him a dangerous look. “Ares, you should know, I don’t accept negative self-talk in my associates.”

Ares felt her anger go from sweet to piercing. He faltered. The twinge in his chest was covered by a strange sensation. A good one. He pushed a callous look onto his face. “Oh yeah? What’s the penalty?”

She rolled her eyes and went back to inspecting the shirt.

“Is it spanking?”

“No, that won’t discourage you.” She unhooked the shirt from the rail and moved on.

“What exactly does being your associate mean?” he called after her, pushing through the clothing maze with all her rattling bags.

She didn’t answer.

“Is it like buds? Is it like solid bros?” 

She looked flatly at him over her shoulder. “Yes, Ares. You’re my solid bro.”

“Score.” He grinned. A sculpted, leather mini skirt caught his eye. He nodded at it. “That would suit you.”

She arched her eyebrow. She looked at the skirt. She looked back at him. She plucked it off the rack and added it to her growing collection of items. He beamed and hurried after her, as she picked up her pace. She seemed to have a floorplan of the multistorey store in her head. She slithered through the narrow alleys between displays, like she was wine being spilled along the floor, Ares clumsily trying to keep up. By the time she’d led him to the changing rooms, she looked like a washing line that had blown away in the wind. 

A smartly dressed nymph with ice blue skin and eyes snapped to attention, as they approached the women’s changing area. “My Lady Aphrodite!”

“Hey, Sugar.” Aphrodite smiled disarmingly. “Anyone in there?”

The nymph shook her head. “No, would you like it closing off?”

“That would be great, thank you. I won’t be too long.” She looked back at Ares. “That way you can come see. I like a second opinion.”

Ares’ heart thumped. His eyes almost popped out of his head.

She tutted. “I’ll obviously change behind a curtain, you dumbass.”

He coughed. “Right, yeah, obviously, I knew that.”

The nymph gestured politely for them to go through. Aphrodite blew her a kiss and sauntered down the slim corridor, the clothes fluttering on their hangers behind her. Ares stumbled after her, widening his eyes at the nymph in mock panic. 

She smiled indulgently at him. “Would you like some calming herbal tea?”

“I think I’m beyond that at this point.”

She giggled and stepped elegantly to guard the entrance, turning her straight back to him. 

Aphrodite led Ares into a circular area with a plush, cream carpet and a series of lilac couches grouped in the centre, facing heavy, lilac curtains over changing booths. A fresh, eucalyptus scent hung in the room.   


“Sit.” Aphrodite pointed to a couch. 

Ares dropped into the couch and slouched in the plump cushions. He felt extremely out of place, like a chunky jigsaw piece from a kid’s toy that was being pushed into an intricate 1,000 piece puzzle. He didn’t mind. Aphrodite vanished behind a curtain, like she was stepping into a flowing waterfall. The image filled his mind, water gushing over her petal skin and glistening like hundreds of crystals, dangling like piercings off her nipples, trickling down her spine to lace the curve of her ass. He could hear the hiss of fabric being peeled off her body. He groaned under his breath and fidgeted in his seat, tugging at his tightening jeans. “This isn't helping me not think about you naked.”

“No?” she called through the curtain.

“No.”

The curtain snapped open to reveal her in a rose pink, strapless, bandeau dress. It looked painted onto her body, scooping her breasts and snug on the tops of her thighs. 

Ares’ mouth went dry. “Yeah, really not helping.”

She grinned wickedly. “And what if I told you I have a birthmark on my hip?”

Ares tensed. “What?”

“It's shaped like a little heart and it’s the colour of a parma violet.”

He groaned rougher and slid down in his seat. “I don't believe you. You’re torturing me on purpose.”

She smiled. "Would I ever?"

“Is it true?”

“Doesn't matter if it's true, you're imagining it.”

He laughed and opened his mouth to protest. She waved at him and snapped the curtain closed. He slumped on the couch, kicking her dainty shopping bags clustered around his hefty boots. He ran his hand through his hair and closed his eyes. His sharp ears caught the hum of a zipper. He opened his eyes. A flutter of movement under the hem of the curtain drew his gaze. She was slipping her black stilettos off. Her bare feet appeared. She rose onto her toes a couple of times, easing them after the long day of walking in heels. Her toenails were painted hot pink. There was a dark purple freckle on her left ankle. The pink dress dropped to the floor.

_ Fucking Fates. This is how I die. _

Three strides and a flimsy wisp of cloth away, that painfully beautiful woman was looking at herself in a semicircle of mirrors in nothing but her underwear. The light in here was soft, it would be kissing her curves, running loving lips on her, just like she deserved. Lips on her skin… Gently kissing every inch of her until she was shivering and clinging to him by his hair… Her back, misted with sweat, pressed to the mirror. Three reflections of her surrounding him, writhing with need… Sinking to his knees and lifting her pretty foot to bite it softly... Prowling forward and hooking her panties with his teeth… Tasting her… Smelling that pomegranate perfume...

“Ares.” Her warning voice came through the curtain.

“Uhuh,” he grunted, vision blurring in the crystal lights.

“I can tell when someone's having a sexual fantasy.”

He jumped and scrabbled to sit up straight on the couch, rubbing his hair roughly. “So?” he croaked. “It wasn't about you.”

“Sure.”

“It wasn't!” he blurted through the sensation of his face on fire. “I’m thinking about those jeans models on the posters. The man reminds me of a guy at the camp.”

“Oh. OK then.” Her reply was unconvinced and sing-song. There was a loud  _ snick  _ and something slung over the curtain rail, dangling over the outside of the curtain.

Ares looked up. It was her bra, strapless with large, moulded cups like rose petals, covered in hot pink lace with tiny hearts sewn into the pattern. He unravelled. “You're cruel.”

She scoffed. “Ha, weak.”

“So fucking weak.” He hugged his chest and spread his legs wider with a writhe in his hips to extinguish the ache.

Her feet flexed and her fingers fluttered above the curtain rail, as she wriggled into something and tested it for comfort. “Don't worry, you've got your couple. What are they doing now?”

Ares chewed his tongue and answered with a dark rumble in his voice. “She's in a changing room and he's bursting in and pinning her to the wall.”

“Mmmm… Lucky lady.” The curtain shot open. 

Ares bit harder on his tongue. She was wearing the leather mini skirt he’d picked and a boned, black top that was essentially just a longline bra. She’d raked her fingers through her hair and left it unruly, like she’d just been doing exactly what he’d been imagining. The sheen of leather and armoured shape over her thick torso made her look like she was about to start a fight in a dive bar. And win. His mouth dropped open and his eyes glazed over.

“I’ll take that as a yes for this ensemble,” she said teasingly.

Ares blinked. 

“Speechless usually means yes.”

Ares nodded dumbly. She chuckled and vanished again, leaving him with the image of her burned onto his retinas. 

"So," she called out in a purposefully prying tone, "is Jeans Nymph your boy type?" 

"Huh?" Ares shook himself conscious. 

"The whippet look. Slender, agile, still got some muscles, still got some innocence. Is that your boy type?" 

Ares thought for a moment. "Oh. Guess it kinda is. Hadn't really catalogued it before. But yeah, I'm insecure, I don't like guys who are bigger than me. Or more aggressive than me."

"You want to be the predator, when it's a man?" Her voice turned genuinely curious, drawing the words out of him, like she was spinning gold out of coarse straw. 

Ares rubbed the back of his neck. "A little. I think it's more that I like using my strength, and with guys I feel like I can do more with it. Get rough with them. Make them squeal. But with girls it just feels like being pushy when they get that all day anyway, so I like girls to top." 

"What a gentleman." More musical zipping. "But we can take it, you know, we're pretty sturdy."

Ares grinned. "We?" 

"Girls in general, I mean."

Ares shrugged. "Yeah, I know. I mean that informs the other part of it."

"Oh?"

"Women are fucking ferocious and I can't do anything but lose to it."

He heard her pause, the swish of cotton stilling, her fidgeting feet planting into the carpet. He sucked his lip, glimmering with pleasure at her interest. The sound slowly started up again. One foot lifted and rubbed her calf. 

"I've just realised your boy type is basically Hermes."

Ares barked a laugh. "Shit, don't tell him."

She laughed too, tuneful and blithe. "Our secret."

He swallowed. "Why'd you ask?" 

"Because I'm nosey,” she replied lightly. “And I'm interested in how people's attraction interacts with gender presentation in their partner, it's something Peitho and I are working on. Like, boy and girl type doesn't really mean men and women as two fixed things, it's two ends to the spectrum that all sorts of bodies and identities fit into and along. People talk about it simply, but little subtleties tell you a lot. Like, you feel that how your strength works changes for boys and girls, but you're not really talking about naturally strong and weak partners, you're talking about masculine and feminine energy. And it's interesting because you say there's something inherent about women that makes you bottom, but you talk about it like it's masculine. Ferocity. Whereas boys are something you see as small and wanting to indulge in your whole massively buff thing. Femme. It's interesting."

Ares raised his eyebrows. He let her speech settle in his brain, soaking in slowly. It felt like new lights were turning on on a circuit board. He spoke in a contemplative, far-away tone. "Huh. Yeah. Cool." He smiled to himself. He stretched out and tucked his forearm behind his head, relaxing into how inexplicably easy this intimate conversation was. "So, what's your types?"

"My secret."

He snickered. "Is it me?" 

The curtain drew back. She was in an aquamarine, summery, halter-neck dress. "My secret," she repeated sternly. 

"Come on," he whined. "I told you mine." 

"The Goddess of Love's type is seriously valuable information," she explained. "It's going to take more than a piggyback ride and a keyring."

"Is there a higher price than that?" Ares sighed. 

She smiled and stepped out of the booth. She walked silently, barefoot on the carpet, like she was walking on water. She came to stand over him, her skirt swishing and brushing his torso, as he leaned forward to gaze up her strong, flowing body. 

"You didn't technically tell me your girl type," she said quietly. 

He kept gazing softly around her, the bump of her belly under the dress, the way her mouth was always just a little bit open, the skirt’s restlessness on her slightly parted thighs. "You've guessed my girl type," he answered huskily. 

She smiled, eyes sparkling in the shadow of her hair, like they had done the moment he'd first seen her. 

"Why did you think I was a gardener when we met?" he asked dreamily. 

She laughed and stepped away, pulling his blood with her. "You have romance novel groundskeeper energy."

"I have no idea what that means."

"Don't worry about it." She hooked the curtain with her finger and gave him a glittering look. "Just know I like romance novels."

The curtain slid closed.

Ares dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and beamed hotly at the ceiling. 

_ Tartarus, this woman could sell me for scrap metal. _

A few more shuffles behind the curtain and Aphrodite emerged, neatened up and in her original outfit, a scarlet crop top and tight, black skirt that did nothing to cool Ares down. 

She walked briskly up to him and clapped her hands to rouse him, gesturing for him to stand. "All done."

Ares hauled himself up. As he did so, she stretched like a cat, slinking her body and pulling her soft belly taut. Her waistband sneaked down. His eye landed on a speck of violet on her hip bone. He broke into a warm smile, like he'd just found a wrapped present with his name on. 

Aphrodite shimmied the stretch out and looked at him blankly. "What?" 

"You do have the birthmark." 

Aphrodite smiled. "I do."

Ares pressed his lips together, the glow across his eyes like votive candles. "Can I see it properly?" 

He asked so softly, it stroked Aphrodite like cotton grass. She could feel his gaze like he was running his tongue over her. She bumped her hip up and folded the waistband of her skirt down to reveal the little, slightly uneven heart pigmented into her skin. She watched Ares' face. She expected him to tease her. But his eyes stayed soft, his gaze sinking into her, lingering. He very slowly pressed his lips together and released them. His chest very slowly rose and fell. His hand drifted forward and the back of one finger stroked the birthmark. The sensation spread through Aphrodite's abdomen.

"See?" she murmured. "You should trust me." 

He smiled tenderly, still totally absorbed in her skin. His focus was mesmerising, exciting. Moving slower than a dandelion seed on a day with no breeze, he rotated his hand and circled his thumb lightly around the heart, tracing its outline, as if committing the simple shape to memory. Aphrodite nudged her hip firmer into his touch. Her eyes wandered down his rising and falling chest, the faintest hint of the definition of his torso under his black t-shirt. One heel rose off the floor. She'd only have to float an inch to meet his lips. 

_ Not yet. You don't know where you are here. Stay safe.  _

"Your fingers are really rough," she said abruptly, waking herself up. 

Ares curled his hand back immediately, making her curse herself. "Yeah, I get into scraps for a living." 

An idea struck Aphrodite. She broke into a broad grin. 

Ares looked suspicious. "What?" 

"We’re getting manicures." 

He snorted. "We are absolutely not getting manicures." 

"You’ll like it." 

"I will not." 

She marched back to the changing room and grabbed the clothes she'd chosen, the leather skirt ensemble and the two dresses all making the cut. "Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?" 

He folded his arms and glared. "Getting shouted down by my sense of masculinity." 

She stuck out her tongue, poked her finger into her mouth, and gagged. "Ugh, gross, well done for describing the whole problem with society in one succinct sentence." 

He picked up her bags. "I thought you liked problems with society." 

"I like problems  _ in  _ society, not with it."

"Huh." 

"And I thought you had a rebellious spirit." 

"I…" 

"So are you going to stand there and whine about 'masculinity', like a baby?" She sashayed to him and walked her fingertips up his chest. "Or are you going to come with me and problematise society, like a sexy rebel?" 

Ares sighed and held her challenging gaze with narrowed eyes. She could feel his heart beating just a little faster than it should under her touch. 

He rolled his jaw and clucked his tongue. "They better do gel, because I don’t want to spend money on something that’s gonna chip in the first brawl." 

Aphrodite beamed in triumph and drummed her hands on his chest. 

She hurried him through the Penelope's Weaving purchase and along the shining streets to the Golden Apple Beauty Parlour before he could change his mind. In a record ten minutes the two of them were seated at adjacent desks, each with a stylish, smiling nymph opposite them. 

Antheia was bright, blossom pink with a citrus yellow ponytail, dressed with pink flowers. She squeezed a dollop of rose-scented hand cream into Ares’ outstretched palm and began to massage it into the cracks in his hand. “Wow, you really do put your skin through the ringer,” she said jovially.

Ares wasn’t really sure what to say. He pressed his lips together guiltily. 

Pannyakhis began carefully pushing Aphrodite’s cuticles down with a soft rubber instrument. She was indigo-grey, with a silver, choppy pixie cut, silver freckles, heavy eyeliner and a silver ring in her lip. She leaned her elbows on the table as she worked and stifled a yawn. 

“You out late again, Kissy?” Aphrodite asked her, half mocking, half concerned.

Pannyakhis shrugged. “Yeah, but for good reason for once. I got a new job.”

“Oh, good, working nights and days, that sounds healthy.” Aphrodite looked at her sternly. “What’s the job?”

Pannyakhis looked at her a little shyly. “Peitho hired me. At The Rose Lounge.”

Aphrodite whipped her hand out of Pannyakhis’ and smacked her on the arm. “No kidding! Told you you were good enough. You’re a great dancer.”

Pannyakhis pulled a face and picked up her hand again. “You put in a word for me?”

“No, I trusted in your talent. But is Peitho not paying you enough to quit?”

“Pay’s good, just gotta put in my last two weeks and I didn’t want to wait to start.”

Aphrodite snared her hand and squeezed it affectionately.

Pannyakhis chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, now let me get at those cuticles.”

Ares and Antheia glanced over, then exchanged a look. Antheia leaned forward and whispered. “Lady Aphrodite has a sort of overseeing role for beauty and sex workers. She’s not formally involved with the companies, but she spends a lot of time checking up on the staff. Woe betide your manager if you’re not well-treated.” She smiled proudly. “But she says our parlour has the best service anywhere.”

Ares whispered back. “I thought she didn’t come up to Olympus.”

Antheia nodded. “She only started doing it recently, and found out the pay wasn’t great and some other stuff. Now management can’t get rid of her. I got four extra days vacation and a raise this month.” She glanced over at Aphrodite sympathetically. “I think she feels a little bad for not being around. We always prayed to her, obviously, and she gave us visions sometimes.” She beamed. “One time she appeared in my bottle of cucumber water at the gym and said I was doing a great job and that I should drop my towel on the floor in exactly seven seconds. I did and this super cute guy picked it up for me.” She raised her hand to show a fine gold ring on her finger. “It’s our third anniversary this Wednesday.”

Ares’ heart warmed in his chest. He glanced over at Aphrodite again. “Sounds like she’s doing a great job.”

Antheia splodged more soothing cream onto his hand. “She really looks out for us.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Aphrodite cut in, raising her voice from the next desk. 

“Nothing!” Antheia squeaked.

Ares grinned like a fox. “You.”

Aphrodite tutted and rolled her eyes. “Such a gossip.”

Ares chuckled. Antheia smiled at him, then set to working the cream deeper into his hands. Her fingers were thin, like flower stems, but surprisingly strong. She pressed in overlapping circles until he could feel the relaxation oozing all the way up his arms and to his shoulders, his skin becoming more supple, his hands feeling more mobile. 

He looked over at Aphrodite. Her head was dropped to the side and her eyes were slightly hooded, her hair sweeping over to expose her long neck. Her hand lay like a nodding narcissus in Pannyakhis’. 

She flicked her startling eyes to him and caught him looking. “So, what colour are you going for?”

Ares laughed uncomfortably. “Can we not do this baby steps and go clear or something.”

“Do you want to take baby steps or man steps?”

Ares clamped his mouth shut and grumbled out of the corner. “Man steps.”

“Good boy, you’re getting red.”

He sighed but grinned and nodded in surrender. Antheia giggled softly and began filing his nails, he already kept them short and neat for combat, but he bit them every now and then. She zipped the file over the jagged bits, buzzing ticklishly in his hand.

"What about you?" he asked.

"Marine Dreams Blue. To go with my new accessory." She tapped her purse on the floor with her foot, swinging the dolphin.

Ares smiled. “You know, this isn’t half bad.”

Aphrodite beamed. “Damn right. Smell that? It’s the patriarchy taking a hit.”

He shrugged. “Smells like acetone.”

“And it’s only fair,” she continued brightly. “I have the  _ Panoptes  _ shit, you get shiny, red nails. We’re both officially compromised.”

Ares bared his teeth. “Reputations in the gutter.”

Antheia scoffed pointedly. “Ugh, Aphrodite, we saw that article. What a smear job.”

“Acteon wrote about the old club I stripped at a few years ago,” Pannyakhis said coldly. “He made a big deal of uncovering stealing from clients, got us shut down. Except I knew everyone there, no one would have done that. I mean, maybe Medea, but she wouldn’t have got caught. It was like from day one of snooping around, he had it in for us. I think he cooked it up.”

Antheia scoffed again. “What a creep.”

Pannyakhis looked impishly at Aphrodite. “You gonna do that thing with the mosquito pheromones to him?”

“Shit, that’s real?” Ares blurted.

Aphrodite smirked sideways at him, then looked coolly back at Pannyakhis. “We’ll see. He’s given me one blessing and one curse, and about a dozen heebie jeebies. So I’ll keep an eye on him. Feels like such a waste to punish him with bugs, if he’s waiting to do something worthy of bulls or boars.”

Ares swallowed. “So, if a guy pisses you off enough, you have horny bulls follow him around?”

Aphrodite shrugged. “I have all sorts of magic tricks, stay on my good side.”

“Fates. Noted.”

The nymphs giggled. 

Ares thought about the article she’d shown him. His mother had dealt with paparazzi all his life, he knew the kind of wrong impressions and bare-faced lies she’d had to strategise around. It wasn’t too long ago that one of them had even tried to claim that she was sleeping with Uncle Hades. He was amazed that all that had happened to that writer was getting fired. Oh, and losing an eye, but that could have been an accident. Maybe. Ma had kept Ares very shielded from public attention. Dad always claimed it was because he wasn’t a story worth telling, but she said it was for his own good. But he’d learned enough about their tricks and targeting from the messes she’d had to clean up. That said… He sneaked his gaze to Aphrodite. She was so fucking beautiful. Was it really possible everyone at that party just saw her as a colleague? And Olympus was full of measurably the most attractive and rich and successful people in the realms. Would it be so surprising if she was playing the field? He thought about her smile in the photographs, captivating and aware of it.

“So, is anything that gets said about you true?” The question left his lips before he realised he wanted to ask it.

Three pairs of eyes shot to him like he was a dartboard. He cleared his throat and looked down.

“Stuff gets said about you too, you know. Your mom can keep you out of print, but tongues wag,” Aphrodite retorted.

Her anger scratched his skin like the teasing tines of a fork. He raised his eyes to her defiantly, curling his lips into a challenging smile. “OK, how about a game? You tell me something you’ve heard and guess if it’s true. Then I’ll do it for you, and so on. Person with the most right guesses wins.”

Aphrodite pinned him with her eyes. “You did say you were competitive.”

“It’s a sickness.”

“OK. Care to make it interesting?”

“No,” Pannyakhis cut in sharply. “I hate watching rich people bet, it makes my pockets hurt. Winner gets a coupon.”

Aphrodite laughed. “Agreed.”

Ares grinned. “Deal.”

“Wait,” Antheia chimed, holding up two bottles of red nail varnish. “Which do you want? Romantic Rose, or Roaring Race Car?”

Ares cocked his eyebrow. “What do you take me for? Obviously Romantic Rose.”

Antheia beamed and nodded.

Ares turned back to Aphrodite. “Ladies first.”

She gave him a calculating look, her eyes on him making it feel like his t-shirt was melting off. “You once stole Apollo’s chariot and drew a dick on Helios’ face. True.”

Ares smiled at the cool sensation of the rose red varnish sliding over his thumbnail. “College. Good times.”

The nymphs burst out laughing.

Ares grinned slyly at Aphrodite, still watching him, like stars over a cornfield. “Poseidon’s secret mistress. He definitely would’ve bragged to Dad. False.”

She nodded. Pannyakhis released her fingers and made two marks on a napkin. 

Aphrodite rubbed her lips together, then said. “You bribed the priest in Sparta to give the city to you.”

Ares bristled.

She gave him a sweet look. “False. Obviously.”

He blushed. He nodded. He avoided Antheia’s eye, as he felt her give him a knowing look. “Uuuh, OK… Lesbos-wide sex parties. False.”

The nymphs cackled. Aphrodite widened her eyes at him. “True.”

He whistled low. “You know what? I’m glad I was wrong.”

She winked at him. They settled into the game like they’d settled into everything today, accusations and guesses pinging between them like tennis balls. The group of four became more rowdy, Antheia and Pannyakhis throwing in their own guesses and commentary and breaking ties, applauding along. Ares was in his element, jibing and sparring, taking hits, making people laugh. Making Aphrodite laugh.

He licked his teeth. “Threesome with Theseus and the Minotaur. True.” 

“Ew, no! Are people saying that?”

“Uuuuh… No?”

“OK, trapped in a vase by giants until Hermes rescued you. True.”

“Fuck! He swore he wouldn’t tell! OK, vacationed in Syria, won them over as worshippers and pissed off everyone who sticks to Greece, like we’re supposed to. True.”

“True! Except they think I’m a fish in Syria.”

“Why?”

“It was an accident. False: you gave Apollo a black eye a couple of months ago.”

“True, he deserved it. True: all the poets going on about you are stooges and it’s all your ghost writing.”

“Absolutely false! My poets are real and they love me like crazy!”

The fluorescent lights in the small, white-walled parlour glowed around them, a clean brightness, combined with fresh green tea and sharp, chemical scents. It bleached Aphrodite’s mind, washing away the clammy discomfort and itchy irritation of the article. She made her guesses with glee, watching Ares’ lively, expressive face fracture and reform like tectonic plates in mockery and curiosity and surprise. She glanced at his hand in Antheia’s, his thick fingers now tipped with rose red, bringing out the colour of his wondrous eyes. She admired how easily he’d nestled into the dainty, feminine space. His brightly coloured bulk should have dominated the room and dwarfed them all, but there was something soft in how he held himself around women. He glanced occasionally at the chic pots of flowering succulents or paused to ask Antheia a question, seemingly genuinely interested in this new environment. He had none of his parents’ presumptuousness around normal people, he was friendly and foolish and let them talk to him pretty much anyway they liked. It was almost like no one had ever told him he was a prince. 

He caught her eye and held it with a little more gentleness. His voice lowered to an engine hum. “I have a slightly more serious one, is that OK?”

Aphrodite kept her face still, but her stomach kicked. He’d kept his guesses light, bringing up the amusing rumours of her many exploits that had everyone’s mother crying “hussy.” But she knew what else was said about her. Cruel Aphrodite. Sadistic Aphrodite. Who enjoyed playing with the deepest feelings of mortals and immortals alike and watching them suffer for no other reason but her boredom. Heartless Aphrodite, for whom love was a job and nothing more. Empty Aphrodite who slept around because she didn’t have anything else to offer. Coward Aphrodite who shirked the Titanomachy then seduced the sea gods to escape justice. Hungry Aphrodite who had only come to Olympus to snare an influential lover and manipulate her way to the top. Why had she let him read that article? How much more had he heard? What must he be thinking? How had she let herself get drawn into this game?

“Sure,” she said breezily, swallowing.

He leaned on the arm of his slightly too small, plastic chair and burned her eyes with his for a long, tense moment. “You’re the worst weaver out of all the goddesses. True.”

Aphrodite rushed with relief, then rage. She smacked her hand over her heart and gasped furiously. “How dare you!”

Ares leaned back in his chair with an infuriating grin. “Athena told me about that contest you guys had in the mortal realm a few years back.”

Antheia and Pannyakhis exchanged a smirk.

Aphrodite cast her hand up in the air. “That was supposed to be a casual thing. For. Fun. But your damn sister is worse about competitiveness than you are.”

Ares flashed more of his teeth. “OK, but apparently you did such a bad job that your powers malfunctioned and a bunch of mortals broke up on the same day. And a flock of sheep died.”

“It was not that bad!”

“They DIED!”

The nymphs erupted into giggles. She grabbed a handful of cotton wool on the desk and threw it at him. He dodged, grabbed his own and threw one back. It hit her in the face, making her snuffle like a kitten.

“OK, OK, kids,” Antheia said indulgently, “watch the merchandise. I think we ought to wind this game down.”

“Who won?” Ares and Aphrodite asked eagerly in unison.

Pannyakhis consulted her napkin tally. “Aphrodite, by one point.”

“BOOOO!” Ares bellowed.

Aphrodite cackled maniacally and flipped him off. Pannyakhis opened a drawer in her desk and withdrew a black slip of paper with curling, gold lettering on it. She handed it to Aphrodite. “Your prize.”

Aphrodite took the coupon, then looked over at Ares. He was holding his finished nails out and inspecting them, shining like the cherries topping her ice cream earlier. “Actually,” she said, with a warm smile, “you take this.” She held it out to him.

He raised his eyebrows. “For the next time I want to smash the patriarchy?”

She smiled wider. “For the next time you want to treat yourself. You look good.”

He looked unsure.

“I mean it.”

He smiled, took the coupon, and folded it into his pocket.

Ares was still periodically inspecting his nails, as they returned to the now thinning crowds and ambled through the mall. He was so distracted by them that he almost fell over a bench at the side of the walkway. 

Aphrodite watched him with a pool of pleasure in her chest. She could see his joking bravado over the trip into girl-land turning into genuine enjoyment. She loved seeing that happen to men. The poor things had so much stuff they weren’t allowed to do for absolutely no good reason. No wonder a bunch of them had such an attitude problem. If she ever raised a boy, she would make sure he was allowed to do whatever he wanted with his look and his hobbies.

“You like it, don’t you?” she asked sweetly.

Ares clucked his tongue and lowered his hand. He shrugged. 

She nudged his arm with hers. “You can say.”

He shrugged again, her shopping bags jostling in his hands. “I dunno. I guess it does look nice. Just, looking nice isn’t much of a thing in my world.”

She nudged him again. “Try telling your face that. And your body.”

He smiled suggestively down at her and nudged her back, heat skipping through her skin. He looked down at his thumping, heavy boots. “I guess, I think of myself as paying a lot of attention to my body, because all I do now is work out. But it was weird, this was attention in a different way. Like, it made me notice stuff about my hands and how they feel and how they move. And then it made me, like, imagine my body. Like it wasn’t just this case I live in, it kinda…” He chewed over his words. “It became its own thing, that I could, I dunno, appreciate. It kinda felt like my body takes care of me, it’s my whole deal, and this let me…” He hesitated. “This is gonna sound dumb, but this let me, like… Give it a present? You know, to say thanks.”

Aphrodite’s heart swelled and sweetness poured through her, as if her blood had turned to berry smoothie. She beamed exuberantly up into Ares’ shy, ponderous face.

He glanced over, saw her expression, and crumpled back. “You’re making fun of me, it did sound dumb.”

“No!” Aphrodite clutched his arm, caressing the sudden knots of tension. “No, Ares. You just said the exact reason I love this work so much. It means a lot to me that you get it.” She slowed her hands and stroked his tactile muscles deeper. “So many people don’t get it. They think it’s vain or shallow, that it wastes a goddess’ time to involve herself in beauty parlours and hair salons and stuff. But that’s exactly why I do it. To celebrate our bodies. To make them feel loved. They deserve it.” She sighed. “I feel like too many of the newer positions are about disciplining the body - skill, civilisation, blah blah blah. When did people decide it was vain and vapid to fucking enjoy things?”

She ground her teeth a little, glaring ahead. She felt Ares lean gently into her. His voice teased the rising frustration out of her. “Well, for what it’s worth, you’re definitely getting me into camp enjoy things.”

She hugged his arm, pressing her cheek to his bicep. His wonderful warmth gushed over her. For a minute, she forgot what a clingy move this was. “It’s a good camp. You’ll like it.”

“I think I will.”

She raised her eyes to his. He was smiling down at her, summer strawberries dressing his honey face. She spoke without thinking. “You seem too sweet for war. How’d it happen?”

Ares’ face fell, then hardened. He leaned away from her a little. She stung, cursing herself, and slipped away from his arm, twisting her hair in her hands and biting her lip.

“Do you mind if we don’t talk about that yet?” he asked, with a wincing glance.

Her brow crinkled in a mixture of curiosity and concern. But the “yet” was encouraging. It said he might feel able to talk about it one day. It said he planned to talk to her more after today. She smiled. “Sure thing.” 

They glanced away from each other, wandering onto a less populated street and feeling the sudden silence between them. The first all day. Aphrodite looked about desperately for something to restart their easy conversation. Her eyes alighted on something even better. Standing against the wall was a photobooth, the small box plastered all over with candy-coloured pictures of nymphs pulling various silly faces, a short curtain drawn across the door. She perked up in delight and snatched the front of Ares’ t-shirt. 

He tumbled with her. “Whoah! What are you doing?”

“I want pictures I don’t have to look at that stupid article for!” she announced and flung him around, bundling him into the photobooth.

He barely fit, cramming in with his shoulders bunched up and his legs totally buried in her shopping bags. The tiny stool screeched in protest at his weight. Aphrodite slipped into the booth after him. There wasn’t an inch of room, so she tucked herself into his lap and drew the curtain over them. He was so comfy, broad and sturdy and smelling of hot pretzels. She unclipped the dolphin keyring and looped one arm around the back of his neck to rest it peeking over his shoulder. She pressed the button. “Smile!” 

The machine clicked. The picture flashed up on the screen, her draped over him and grinning, while he smiled stiffly.

She rounded on him. “What in Asphodel was that?”

Ares shrugged. “I’m bad at pictures.”

“If you can do it for Acteon, you can do it for me. Smile,” she snarled.

He bared his teeth at her, like a piranha. “Like this?”

She prodded his nose. He laughed. She darted her hand to press the button and beamed at the camera. This time the screen showed a much cuter option, Ares grinning a little clownishly, the dolphin bobbing on his shoulder. 

“I look deranged,” he said.

She shuffled on his lap. “Just relax.”

“Aphrodite, I’m gonna be straight with you, if you sit on me this close to my crotch, I will not be relaxed.”

She chuckled fiendishly and rooted in her bag. She retrieved her compact and lipstick and touched up the purple paint on her pout. She clicked them shut and stowed them away. “Do your crazy face then, and I’ll do mine.”

He nodded. She pushed the button. He growled like a jackal and suddenly hugged her waist and scooped her close. She gasped and squealed. The camera ticked. The screen flashed up a picture looking like a mad kidnapper and his helpless victim on a vintage movie poster, the dolphin held aloft, like it was springing behind them. 

Aphrodite clapped her hands. “Yay! Now you’re getting it, you goofball!”

Ares grinned like a demon. The camera clicked several more times, the pictures on the screen getting more and more ridiculous. One froze them mid-tickle-fight, flailing in the small space and banging the walls with their shoulders. One showed Ares wearing strands of Aphrodite’s hair as a moustache. One had them with their fingers curled like claws, growling into the camera. In one, Aphrodite was looking away, just changing position on his lap, and he was collapsing back against the wall with his eyes raised pleadingly to heaven. The following one had her pinching his cheek in reprimand, while he tried to bite her hand. Then he was cuddling her from behind and gazing up at her dopily, while she rolled her eyes with her arms folded, the dolphin poking out of her fist. The last one put the poor plushy with its beak between her teeth and its tail between his, as they looked playfully into each other’s eyes. 

Aphrodite giggled and plucked the dolphin, still dangling from his mouth. She affixed it to her bag again.

Ares’ arms were still around her waist. The end of his nose brushed her jaw, his voice dropping low and secretive. “You know, just saying, this is a perfect make out opportunity.”

Aphrodite’s pulse skipped. She caught his eye. “You think I don’t know that?”

He smiled, his nose running up her cheek and his breath tickling her. “So…?” His arms furled a little tighter.

A delicious ache pooled between her legs. She fought to hold in a squirm, making her voice light and plain. “No, I just reapplied my lipstick.”

He drew back to meet her gaze, his twin kilns of eyes sparkling mischievously. “I mean, it looks like a good shade for me.” 

She arched an eyebrow. He mimicked her. She tutted and rolled her eyes. He bounced her lightly in his lap, bringing her closer. A smile pulled at the corners of her tingling mouth. She whipped her hand out, pushed the photo button, cupped his face and pressed her lips to his cheek. His arms tensed around her. She hovered for a drawn out moment in the musk of his sweat under his shirt. The tissue paper rustled in the bags stuffed around their legs. The camera clicked. She ignored it. She stroked her thumb along his sharp cheekbone then down to rub his neck. She moved her lips against his warm skin. She felt his chest rise to meet her, heard his breath catch. His fingertips dusted just under her breast. The softest, suppressed moan escaped his throat. 

She pulled back and admired her handiwork - a large, purple lipstick mark, like a pressed pansy, just above his jawline, a little smudged, and glossy like magazine ink. “Nope, not your colour at all.”

Ares lounged back on the squeaking stool. “That’s OK, I don’t follow fashion.”

“I gathered that.”

“Hey!” He poked her belly. “Just for that, I’m telling everyone we did make out.”

She tossed her hair, lashing his face. “Whatever, no one will believe you.” She clicked the print button, slid off his knee, and out of the booth.

She reached for the slot, where the photo strip had been spat out with a whir and a clunk. Ares lunged after her and grabbed it before she could. He brandished the strip victoriously, towering over her. “Aha! Photographic evidence.”

Aphrodite put her hands on her hips. “Nonsense. I kiss everyone on the cheek.”

“You make out with everyone too, in fairness.”

“Do not!”

He shot her a look, then coursed on belligerently. “Besides, look where your mouth is. That’s virtually my neck. This is an undeniably sexy kiss.”

“It is not a…” She peered at the photo and stopped. She was kissing Ares’ cheek. Ares looked like he’d just been shot in the heart. His mouth hung open, his eyes were wide and shocked, the red flare across his face blazed so brightly it left a mist on the lens. She squawked in delight. “Wow! What face are you pulling?"

Ares whipped the photo strip out of her eye line. “I was surprised!”

She clutched her sides with spasms of whooping laughter. “You look like you might have a heart attack!”

“Again, surprised!” he yelped.

“‘Man asks woman to make out with him, has coronary when it works.’”

Ares broke into laughter too, hers cantering around him and splashing in his body like children in a fountain. He bumped her with his flank and coughed. “Yeah, well, you must have noticed by now, I’m a textbook case of low self-confidence.”

She sighed out the last of her peals of laughter, dabbing her wet eyes with her fingertips. “If you’re going for the pity angle, it won’t work.”

He grinned. “Don’t be so sure, my pity angle can be pretty a _ cute _ .”

She looked at him flatly. “Seems obtuse to me.” She reached for the photo strip. He held it over her head. She settled for gesturing at it. “But, regardless, this photo proves I can never kiss you again. Look what it does to you, it wouldn’t be safe.”

Ares pouted. “It’s totally safe, I just need to work up a tolerance to it.”

She pursed her lips. “OK, then how about we go build you a purple bear and you can smooch that all you want for practice.”

He folded his arms. “That’s like saying work up your arsenic tolerance by drinking more lemonade.”

“Keep referring to my kisses as arsenic, Ares, it really gets me going.”

“Sorry, yeah. Now you’ve bought that almond lip butter, it’s more like cyanide.”

She thumped his arm. “You know, I’ve met people with no moves, but you might be the first person I’ve met who actually has reverse moves.”

He cuffed her hand. “Hey, you find me a guy who can moonwalk and doesn’t regularly fuck, I’ll stop taking that as a compliment.”

She fluttered her hand in his face, like he was an annoying insect. “Ugh, shush, pick up my bags and buy me a lemonade.” She strutted off with her nose in the air.

Ares slipped the photo strip into his back pocket, scooped up the bags and caught up to her hastily. He reached her, spun on his heel, and began to walk backwards beside her. He grinned down at her and bounced his eyebrows.

She narrowed her eyes. “Stop it.”

“Reverse moves.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

He crashed hard into a pillar, groaning and crumpling.

“Hey, look, the metaphor works,” she said dryly.

He dragged himself back to standing and caught her up again, walking normally this time, at least as well as he could, weighed down with all her purchases. “I’m gonna get nachos, you want something to eat with your lemonade?”

“Yes.”

“Whatcha going for?”

“Half your nachos.”

He rolled his eyes. “Oooof course.” 

She eyed the rock of his hips as he walked. She reached out and plucked the photo strip sticking out of his back pocket.

“Mind your manners, Old Lady!” Ares mock-scolded.

She wrinkled her nose at him, then looked down at the photographs. She smiled at the jumble of jokes and stolen moments. She tore the strip in two, slipped one half into her bag and the other back into his pocket. She couldn’t resist giving his firm ass a small pat.

“I gave you the one with your heart attack,” she said.

“Too kind.” He smiled broadly. 

In the end, they got two portions of nachos, but Ares paid for them both. He got extra hot salsa and fed her a chip with it on. Her eyes watered furiously and he cackled, as she fanned herself and chugged her lemonade. They talked about TV shows and theme parks and just how high a heel Aphrodite could walk in. They went to one of the fountains and Ares watched as Aphrodite ducked into the spray to cool her skin, leaving her sparkling. He showed her a trick shot with a coin, splashing into the pool. She asked him what he wished for. He lied and said for protein shakes to taste better. They went to the arcade. She thrashed him on the dance mats, he won back his honour on air hockey. She turned out to be alarmingly good at the shooter. He said that was a shame, because he couldn’t do the corny thing of putting his arms around her from behind to show her what to do. She gave him a pulse-quickening look and “accidentally” fired in a useless direction. She leaned indulgently into his body, as he folded his arms around her and pressed his hands over hers on the joystick, laughing into her hair at her crazed joy at unleashing destruction. She felt like she was floating in a hot spring.

The light through the glass roof pinked, the day growing late and the crowds draining out of the mall. Ares and Aphrodite moved slowly towards the exit, their feet dragging, their eyes pulled constantly towards each other, as they got closer and closer to where they had to set off in opposite directions.

Aphrodite opened her mouth a dozen times to ask if he wanted to come home with her, trying a dozen different nonchalant phrasings in her head.  _ “We could watch that movie I was telling you about.” “My place is closer than yours, you want a coffee?” “It’s been a long day, we could open a bottle of wine.” “You’ve only had snacks all afternoon, need some dinner?” _ A dozen times she bit her tongue and told herself not to rush.  _ Be safe. You need to make Olympus work, not jump headlong into something with a dang 23-year-old prince in your third week.  _ She glanced at the way his shoulders rolled when he walked.  _ I mean, headlong could be nice, though. _

Ares pulled ahead and turned around, looming over her, halting her. Her heart thudded. They were walking alongside the street wall, the large, revolving doors spilling the very beginnings of sunset into his hair. He put her bags down, folded his arms to squarely frame his pecs, and dropped to lean against the wall. He looked at her like he was trying to work out a puzzle. He ran his teeth over his lower lip. “Hey...” he said gruffly, “Was this a date?”

Aphrodite’s stomach fluttered. She shook her hair off her face and looked coolly up at him. “No.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “It felt kinda like a date.”

She jutted her hip out and pursed her lips. “Did you go to the effort of asking me out on a date?”

“I did not, no.”

“Then you don't get one.”

He huffed. “But, if I ask you out, I have to deal with all the fear of rejection crap, and I hate that. So I'm thinking, instead, I could just keep bumping into you in classic date scenarios until I slowly wear you down.”

She pursed her lips tighter. “I hate that idea.”

He shrugged. “I think it's got legs.”

“It does not have legs. It is a terrible, little snake of an idea.”

“Snakes have legs.”

“No, they don't.”

“They do.”   


“They do not.”

“They do! Honest to gods, like little, tiny, scuttley ones.” He lifted one hand out from his body and wriggled his fingers like a bug.

She snorted and daggered him with her eyes. “OK, well, your idea can take its tiny legs and scuttle off. You want a date? Ask me out.”

Ares huffed again, longer this time, his shoulders lowering and smoothing. He flexed his neck and dropped his head to look deeply into her eyes. His stare was intense, the heart of a volcano churning magma that cascaded across the rocky contours of his face. Her lipstick mark was still on his cheek, branding him, stamping him like a gift parcel. His hand draped over his bicep gleamed with the ruby nail polish. He dropped his temple against the wall, his gaze softening, travelling with open longing around her body, resting on her lips, then her breasts, then the high hem of her skirt, heating each part of her in turn. She felt like a toasting marshmallow. She sneaked her hand to the leather strap of her bag and twisted her finger into it until it pinched, to keep her grounded. She watched his mouth for signs he was about to speak. His teeth dragged over his lip again, leaving it wet and flushed.

He broke his gaze. “Nah.”

Aphrodite’s jaw dropped. She spluttered. “Seriously?”

His mouth twisted. “If you want a date so bad, ask me out.” He winked, stood, rolled on his heel and began to stroll away.

Aphrodite stood in the mess of her abandoned shopping bags. She flooded with ice, then acid. “Ares!”

Ares turned back, grinning cockily, hands in his pockets. He continued lumbering backwards. 

“Don't you walk away from me!” she commanded.

He laughed like a gremlin. “Too late.”

“Get back here!”

He was getting further off, raising his voice. “No can do. If this was a date, I would obviously be more of a gentleman, but as it is…” He spread his hands helplessly.

She glared at him murderously. “Fuck you! You couldn't be a gentleman if it was the last thing between you and Tartarus!”

“Sorry? Can't hear you! Too far away!”

“Ares!”

He mouthed nothing and gestured at his ear.

“Ares!”

He pointed to his ear again.

“You jerk!”

“What? You need to shout! Try being more shrill!”

“That’s it! You’re getting mosquitos!”

“Aw, I had a good day too!”

He waved lazily, flashed her one final, maddening grin, and vanished into the revolving doors.

Aphrodite stared after him, stunned and furious and utterly delighted.

*

Hera stretched her legs out along her couch in one of the smaller sitting rooms on the ground floor. She lit a cigarette and took a long drag, the smoke filled her lungs and momentarily silenced the irritable chattering in her head. The  _ Panoptes  _ article had been a disaster. That little lizard was supposed to show off some royal benevolence, then make something out of Ares’ return. Instead he’d stuck himself to bloody Aphrodite like a barnacle on a boat. She was fast becoming the kind of woman that talk clung to like fungi. The question was, was that going to be a problem? 

The clomp of Ares’ big, leather boots in the corridor broke her thoughts, followed by the amusing noise he made when he was humming a guitar solo under his breath. His bright, sunshine face appeared around the door face, his smile radiant and rare. “Hey, Ma.”

Hera looked at him quizzically. “Hello, Lamb. You’re in a good mood.”

He kept smiling. “I guess.” He leaned deeper around the door. “Ma, where do you get flowers?”

Hera frowned in confusion. “At florists.”

“Yeah, but, where are the florists?”

The edge of Hera’s mouth lifted. “I’ll get you a number.”

“Thanks.”

“What do you need flowers for?”

“Just a thing.”

“By thing, do you mean person?”

Ares tapped the side of his nose. 

His fingertip caught her eye. “Are you wearing nail polish?”

“Yep.”

“You’re father’s going to be a complete bitch about that.”

Ares rolled lazily back around the doorframe. “I know. He’s the patriarch.”

Hera blinked in yet more confusion, calling after him, “Did you at least get gel?”

“Yep!” he called back from out of sight.

She rocked back in her seat and took another drag on her cigarette.  _ Panoptes  _ lay open on the coffee table. She picked it up and peered at the photograph of her son and the new goddess, smiling with unfiltered joy into each other’s eyes. She reached out and tapped a clump of ash into the tray on the table.

She would have to keep an eye on that.

*

The next morning, Aphrodite sat at her kitchen table in her long, cranberry, satin dressing gown, letting the cool material caress her body and reading an extremely dirty chapter of her current romance novel. She slurped her orange juice and poked her cereal about in the bowl, the spoon tinkling on the china.

A knock on the door made her jump. She hopped up and hurried to open it. Hermes’ brash grin and fluorescent tank top battered her still sleepy eyes. 

He took in the gown falling open low on her chest. “Well, I made the right decision getting to you early.”

Aphrodite smiled indulgently. “Hello, Jam Pot.”

“Noooo. Hot Sauce.”

“Jam Pot.”

Hermes conceded with a toss of his choppy fringe. “How’s the morning treating you, you saucy Cypriote?”

“About as well as all mornings treat night owls,” she replied, stifling a yawn. “Is this business or pleasure?”

“What's the difference with you?”

She chuckled. 

He ran his hand through his hair. “I am on duty, but two birds, one stone.” He reached into his satchel and pulled out a folded note. “I’m having a party the weekend after next.”

Aphrodite took the note and unfolded it. It was a torn out notebook page with a scrawl saying,  _ Costume Party,  _ followed by an address, date and time.

She looked up at him, her heart sinking a little, thinking of the struggle of her last Olympus party. “This is how you’re doing the invitation?”

“Everyone else I’m just telling, but you haven’t been around, so you get a written address.”

“I feel special.”

“You are special.”

She pocketed the note. “I’ll try to swing by.”

He gave her a knowing look. “It’s not gonna be like the bees thing. No king and queen. Just booze and music and slutty costumes. Way more your speed.”

Her heart rose again. “OK. I actually will try to swing by.”

“Aces.” He ducked behind her door frame. “Also, I have a delivery.” He re-emerged with a cute, little bouquet of purple tulips, tied with a purple, organza ribbon, from which dangled a small, ivory card. He presented it to her. “Some poor sucker's got it bad.”

Aphrodite smiled widely. “Who's it from?” She took the bouquet and flipped over the card. She smirked at the note. “Never mind, I know.”

In fine, purple calligraphy, it read:  _ See? I can be a gentleman. So fuck you.  _

“Alright, what did the big lug say?” Hermes hooked the note with his fingertip and scanned it. He looked up at her solemnly. “I would never speak to you like this.”

She tilted her head. “Oh? What would you have said?”

“Ummm…” Hermes scratched the back of his head. “Wait, I need to think of a flower-based sex pun.”

She rolled her eyes affectionately. “Alright, off you pop.”

He perked up. “Oo! I hope these flowers help our budding romance.”

She laughed and shook her head.

He thought for a second. “No, not dirty enough. Something about a bed? Like flower bed? Or… pollinating…”

She laughed harder. “Out!”

She started to bundle him out of the doorway. 

“Hang on!” He ferreted in his satchel again and handed her an envelope. “He had a letter for you too.”

Aphrodite took the letter, her cheeks warming. Hermes gave her a quick salute, spun on his toes, and zoomed into the air, like a champagne cork. She watched him go, waving as he glanced back, then closed the door. Her smile nestled prettily onto her face. She dipped her nose into the tulips and breathed their lovely, spring fragrance. She laid them carefully on the table and opened the letter. Inside was no note, just a page ripped out of what seemed to be a nature book. It was covered in columns of small, neat text and pictures of snakes. One paragraph had been circled in red pen.

_ All vertebrates possess a gene that activates the growth of limbs during embryonic development. While most snakes have evolved not to activate this gene in utero, it remains dormant, and in some species, like pythons, small spines or claws still protrude from the skin. The right genetic mutation could turn them into legged animals.  _

Aphrodite’s smile spread dazzlingly across her face. She put her hand to her dancing heart and touched the page to her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Holy Gods, I've been working on this fic and these characters for MONTHS. I am so, so excited to finally share this story. Thank you so much to [Myth is a Mirror](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myth_is_a_Mirror/pseuds/Myth_is_a_Mirror), [Kindness Graceless](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KindnessGraceless/pseuds/KindnessGraceless), Cub and L'Etoiles Fous for listening to my many ramblings about this ship and fic. You guys are the midwives that helped me birth my fandom-opus (except, like, pretend I said a not weird thing there). Massive love as well to Chinchela's Thirsty Heathens discord community, you guys are my fandom village and all your cheer-leading makes my heart grow three sizes every time, also I can only hear Ares and Aphrodite in Diz's voice now.


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